The cave is a curious place, it is a place of cool and calm, a place of shelter and protection from the elements, a place people have sought sanctuary for thousands of years, a place people can live in community and also a place where people can be alone.
When I lived in Australia I soon learned to seek the shade to get away from the heat of the day and the same happens in our spiritual life. Sometimes there is an urge to get away to a place of solitude, a place where I can be silent deep within myself, a place away from the world. Yet I often find that when I answer that call I cannot understand why I do it, I have to be alone but then I find a desire to return to my family, my community. It is as though I have to go away in order to come back to myself.
There are times when that desire for quiet and shelter is more pronounced: when we are dealing with traumas, with bereavement, loss, or other significant changes in our life. Perhaps we have to withdraw to a quiet place to discover our true selves and our need of others and our need of God or perhaps we have to acknowledge that need, and just stop and listen.
There is a long history of people seeking the cave. Elijah encountered God in the gentle breeze at the mouth of the cave, in the thin silence. ”Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”(1 Kings 19:13).
Jeremiah wrote: “ Abandon your towns and dwell among the rocks, you who live in Moab. Be like a dove that makes its nest at the mouth of a cave.”(Jer 48:28).
St Benedict escaped to Subiaco when he was a young man, to get away from the noise and clamour of Rome, and of course the rest is history. So perhaps the cave is a necessary place, a special place, a place of encounter. The cave is also a creative place.
In Australia there are many examples of ancient rock art discovered in caves, with scenes of everyday life and the hunter gatherer lifestyle of the Aboriginal community; some express the spirituality of the people ; and many use the basic earth tones of the landscape, deep red pigments used to demonstrate the hands of the cave dwellers, the hand prints of the artists which add to the tapestry of the landscape with a living memory, a tangible connection of people from ancient times chiming with us here in the present, continuously seen and encountered by people through time.
We find the same tangible connectivity in Western culture with the beauty of art in all its diverse forms giving voice to our expression of ourselves and our relationships, with God, with ourselves and with each other. Through writings, poetry, art and music which can try to express the inexpressible, we can reach out beyond ourselves to that place, that void, that cave within ourselves where the song plays.
St Benedict went away to find God, to find himself, to find his direction, and he found his song and the outflow of his gift for others which still continues to flow out through the example of his life and the handprint of his rule. Perhaps the call to the cave is the call to contemplation, to that thin beautiful silence which shapes us and holds us and waters the garden of our existence. ”The thoughts of wisdom are more abundant than the sea, and her counsel deeper than the great abyss. As for me, I was like a canal from a river, like a water channel into a garden” (Sir 24:29). That is a beautiful image to hold.
Sarah Richards
Oblate of Prinknash
