get away from it all

People try to get away from it all – to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like.

By going within. 

Nowhere you can go is more peaceful – more free of interruptions – than you own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquility. And by tranquility I mean a kind of harmony.

So keep getting away from it all – like that. Renew yourself. But keep it brief and basic. A quick visit should be enough to ward off all <…> and send you back ready to face what awaits you.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Modern Library. 2003. P.37, Book 4, #3. Also see The Internet Classics Archive | The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (mit.edu)

an unlikely intellectual refuge

Given how badly the men’s bodies were faring, it would seem likely that their minds, too, would begin to fail. But more than five weeks into their ordeal, both Louie and Phil were enjoying remarkable precision of mind, and were convinced that they were growing sharper every day. They continued quizzing each other, chasing each other’s stories down to the smallest detail, teaching each other melodies and lyrics, and cooking imaginary meals. 

Louie found that the raft offered an unlikely intellectual refuge. He had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow procession of shark fins, every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it. In his head, he could roam anywhere, and he found that his mind was quick and clear, his imagination unfettered and supple. He could stay with a thought for hours, turning it about.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Random House. 2010. 496 pages.

lectio... meditatio... oratio... contemplatio.

Once it was all simple. Catholics prayed in Latin for salvation in words and ceremonies dictated by the One True Church in Rome. Protestants prayed in fancy English for the expiation of sin and a place in a decorous heaven. Jews prayed in Hebrew to the One God who had inexplicably chosen us for a private destiny and saddled us with commandments.

And then, in the time it took to go from Frank Sinatra to the Beatles, these ancient taboos and walls began to crash. Prayer changed, too. For Catholics, the key event was the Second Vatican Council. “Vatican II was a course correction when it came to Catholic prayer,” says Bradford Hinze, a Fordham University professor of theology who is old enough to have personally experienced the change. “Emphasis shifted to the centrality of the Bible for Catholic prayer.”

Part of this populist shift involved better exposing laypeople to a centuries-old method of Biblical exegesis and meditation called lectio divina, or divine reading. Practitioners set time aside for a daily Bible reading in four stages: reading the text carefully (lectio), contemplating its meaning (meditatio), entering into a dialogue with God about it (oratio) and reaching a wordless contemplation of God (contemplatio).


Zev Chafets, "The Right Way to Pray?", New York Times Magazine. September 20, 2009.

Somehow the very act of remembering the Savior and reflecting upon his life is, and of itself, a catalyst for goodness. It must be difficult if not impossible to genuinely reflect upon the Savior's life and simultaneously do evil. That would be tantamount to asking someone to step forward and backward at the same time. Each time we pause to meditate upon the Savior, we take a spiritual step forward.

Tad R. Callister, The Infinite Atonement. 2000. p.289