A few days ago I received an e-mail from a friend in Canada which opened with these words.

 “It’s 5:00 am , yes it’s five o’clock in the morning!

I have taken advantage of finding myself awake at this early hour, so I am sitting on my front porch in the absolute silence of the day, before it has begun. It is a cool dark morning; the weather has suddenly turned from summer to fall/autumn.

There are no cars taking people to work. There are no little kids noisily going to school. The day is summoning up its energy for a new day.”

 It brought to mind a number of thoughts and responses which I would like to explore.

 Here in the UK , the very idea of a ‘front porch’ seems out of the ordinary. Often our front doors open onto a short path and a gate giving access to the street. In earlier times in the industrial cities, the path didn’t come into the story and the door opened directly onto the pavement. Now it may open to a walk-way some eight or nine stories high. So the very idea of sitting on the front porch in the early hours is peculiar. My friend went on to describe using this opportunity to be quiet and to be still for his morning prayer, a time for reflection in stillness and silence.

 When Thomas Merton was given permission to move from his monastic home to a hermitage in the grounds, he too had a porch with a chair where he was able to sit and read. From such moments of stillness and silence came nourishment for his life of prayer. I wonder how many times he too sat on his simple wooden chair under the porch of his hermitage, deep in the Kentucky countryside as dawn broke through the trees that surrounded him? With the dawn would have come the gradual chorus of bird song greeting the new day.

 There is something about the stillness of dawn that is special, when the deep blackness of night begins to ease and the light of a new day gradually spreads over the land. Waking from sleep, before the onset of our busyness there is a brief time that is both gentle and reflective. It is a time when we remember the words early in Mark’s Gospel when he refers to the Lord going out before dawn to seek a quiet place to pray.

 The seeking of that ‘quiet place’ demands persistence and imagination in our contemporary society. For some it may be possible within their own homes to find a place that can be reserved for prayer, maybe somewhere that an icon or a crucifix can bring to mind our reason to be there. Often, driving to school through an extensive wooded area, listening to a tape of the psalms from Morning Prayer, gave me time for reflection without too much distraction. Care had to be taken though as deer inhabited the woods and for some reason, they didn’t respect the roadway carving through their territory…

 How often do we have such an opportunity to reflect in solitude on the deep mystery of our faith in God, not a time for words and songs but a time of attentive listening? But so much is going on, we are kept busy with deadlines to meet and appointments to keep, surrounded by noise in a congested world.

 Too often we associate prayer with the written word, prayer for this intention, or that person, the recitation of familiar word patterns that are reassuring. But there are occasions of prayer when should allow ourselves to experience the solitude of silence and become open to the presence of God in our lives. A hard task and difficult to undertake at first, our reluctance to be still overcomes our intention to give time for reflection.

 No matter. We share that with each other, no one finds it easy. Only by our persistence can we begin to make progress on a difficult path. Even then, there will be set-backs, a breakdown in pattern and a darkness that can be lonely and without direction.  It is then that we remember Merton’s concluding words to his journal Woods, Shore, Desert: “Hang on to the clear light”

 In his book ‘Thoughts in Solitude’ Merton also wrote:

 "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end”.

 There is trust involved in prayer that we cannot avoid, nor should we seek to, for through our experience of solitude we learn something of the patience of the Lord and love of the Spirit.

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