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Tennessee Williams says "a play is a trap in which to catch the truth." 

As writers we need to attempt (above all) to get to an important  truth or face the rejection slip.

At Dorothy's Home we know that writing can be a hard task, and it a given that inspiration comes when one can still the mind and remain perfectly quiet,​ waiting for the wealth and wisdom of the collective unconscious, or as some call it the "muse" ; therefore, we practice silence as a principle and share our thoughts (only if desired) at the end of the writing day, with refreshments.

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From the Hermitage in Big Sur

"If we are to 'listen' as St Benedict urges, we must seek silence. And we must 

distinguish silence that leads to wholeness from silence that does not."  The Christmas letter from the Camaldolese monks 2016


"Very soon, stepping into stillness became my sustaining luxury." Pico Iyer, travel writer, on his visits to the hermitage.


The basis for A Writer's Cabin is inspired by the practice of the Camaldolese Hermitage in Big Sur, a slice of American paradise on earth. Google it and discover the place for yourself. The young prior, Fr. Cyprian, is a well-known composer, musician, writer and much more. You may want to go there yourself for a day or a week or several times for an unforgettable experience.

Silence

At Dorothy's Home we practice silence as a discipline leading to serenity and peaceful invitation to the muses whom we are emboldened to call upon as creative people. We deposit all "stuff" at the door when we enter and do not use technology, except as tools for the mechanics of putting words in cyberspace instead of on paper; however, some of us like writing on yellow legal pads with erasable pencils and are resting from iPads, cell phones, newspapers, radios, chatter while on retreat. Writing supplies are always available here.


I am inspired by my silent retreats at the Camaldolese Hermitage in Big Sur and the beautiful souls of the brothers who live, work and pray there. (The Prior, Fr. Cyprian is second from left. )


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..."There is the great and quiet water reaching to Asia, and in an hour or so the still starts will show over it but I am quieter inside than even the ocean the stars."--Robinson Jeffers, from "Tamar"

Wendell Berry, from "I Go Among Trees"


"I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle."





​"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."  

PB Shelley

Raimon Panikkar"The Rhythm of Being"



Silence is that emptiness from which sound emerges as sound...The place of the pneuma, the spirit, is silence, not as a repressed or suffocated logos...Silence is empty, it has nothing to say...and when there is something to say out of silence the word is born.

Paul Goodman (1911-1972), AMERICAN POET, SCHOLAR, PSYCHIATRIST, FROM SPEAKING AND lANGUAGE: DEFENSE OF POETRY (RANDOM HOUSE 1972)

"Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each.  There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, 'This...this..."; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos."

Summit Seminars c2016

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