Postcards from silence: new vistas at Wernersville

I wrung 18 hours of silence out of last week's chaos.  Time enough for a conversation with Patient Spiritual Director and a long walk.  In the decade or so I have been visiting the old Jesuit Novitiate at Wernersville, I had never walked the path to the northeast corner, which overlooks Reading.  My ankle is healed enough to go "off-road" at last, so I walked down the hedgerows and looped back up the hill and to the overlook to take in this new-to-me view.  A reminder that even in the silence, the world is still there.

The next morning a large group was visiting for breakfast, a talk and tour.  In the face of this crowd I was taking my cues from Arsenius: fuge, tace, quiesce.  Wend my way through the babbling conversation in the dining room to the kitchen, make a cup of tea, and flee for the stillness and quiet of the eastern cloister.  On my way in, I saw what I had never seen before at Wernersville, a man in a navy blue jacket and tie striding down the first floor corridor, coat tails flying and talking a mile a minute on his cell phone, "The place is so (f*ng) uh, you know, enormous."  The expletive was (barely) edited out as he turned his head and caught sight of the open doors of the chapel.

Despite my desperate need for the silence, the morning's noise felt joyful.  This was just another new vista.  The world is still here, not held at arm's length from the stillness, but burrowed right into its center.
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For a visual walk through a day at Wernersville, see this post by Robin (we managed to overlap for 40 delightfully liminal minutes).  Her photos beautifully capture the vast stillness and warmth of the place.

Margaret Almon writes here of her husband's visits to Wernersville, along with some photos of the art to be found within.