It is a Saturday, mid-March, on Cape May Point.
Saint Mary by the Sea rests broadly,
her red roof crowned with crosses, her rustic expanse visible for at least a mile to beachcombers in both directions.   
She’s a retreat center and has been so since 1909, her old timbers breathing with the rhythm of the neighboring lighthouse beam
as it makes its dependable journey round and round;
slicing the night with a comforting light.
The structure was born a hotel in 1889 and spent time as a home for the elderly and unwell before the Sisters of St. Joseph extended a hand and initiated her conversion.
They transformed her ballroom into a simple hardwood chapel and her 1200 feet of sun-kissed porches into sacred spaces for rest and prayer.    I’m sitting on a porch across the street, held by the creaking tones of Georgie’s chair; basking gratefully in an advancing patch of morning sunshine. I know the chair belongs to Georgie because the worn wooden rockers are labeled with fading plaques, the names of Sisters who love this place best.
My current slice of peace is a seaside respite for nuns.
This weekend, it is also a holy breathing space for six grateful Mennonite women. We’ve been trusted with the key for a silent retreat. 
A cool breeze is lifting the salty hair from my shoulders. Having just spent hours in solitude on the beach, I’m more than a little wind-blown. Some would say sandblasted.
Chapped lips and one particularly stiff joint are a minuscule trade for the joyful privilege of singing an early morning worship song with the crashing waves.
I love that no one...save my Maker, could hear me.
Well, except for a few industrious seabirds...their impossibly-sticklike legs moving quickly away.
Probably hoping to guard their hidden feathered ears from another refrain.
Songs are admittedly a departure from the intended silence
of this retreat. But the songs seemed, in that moment, a necessary response. It’s because every inhale and each new sight feels like its own kind of prayer in spaces such as this.  
Please pile up all the wearisome moments in an ordinary day and frankly, shove them in a corner.
Because the carefully arranged and painstakingly stressed-over hours of a typical day amount to an excess of rubbish when stacked alongside the precious seconds compiling today’s brand of day.
 
A soul-scrubbing, excuse-shattering, silent yet deafening day.
A ripe to the point of bursting kind of day.
With solitude comes the inevitable recollection that nothing else fills the gaping hole in our beings...quite like the God who shaped that space.
It is a daunting labor and immeasurably helpful practice to close our mouths and intentionally hold ourselves apart.
  To allow ourselves the reminder we’ve got a personal abyss that needs to be filled. 
Listening.
Reaching.
Waiting.
Wondering.
Hoping.
Realizing.
Receiving.
Besides the sunshine,
these are some of the wonderful things I’m privileged to soak up like a thirsty sponge while I’m rocking in Georgie’s creaky chair. 
I’m bottling it all and storing it carefully in my heart.
Souvenirs of silence
to be uncorked and poured out the next time I’m straining under the tedium of an ordinary day.
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