The great spiritual problem of the day is being “like fish out of water.” A life without spiritual regularity drifts through time with little to really hang onto when life most needs an anchor. Instead, we often get caught up in someone else’s agenda most of our lives. We put the cell aside for work and its never-ending deadlines. We forget the cell when we need it most and make play a poor substitute for thought and prayer. We think that we can run our legs off doing, going, finding, socializing, and still stay stolid and serene in the midst of the pressure of it all. And then we find ourselves staring at the ceiling one night and thinking to ourselves, “There must be more to life than this.”

The fact is that human beings need spiritual rest as well as physical rest. Psychologists deal daily with the effects on clients of stress and pressure, of frenzied work and frantic schedules, of open-plan offices and crammed buses, of swarming trains, planes, and automobiles. They see the weary and the worried, the angry and the anxious, and all of them say the same thing: I need time for myself. I need to be able to think for a while. I just need someplace quiet. We find ourselves struggling between having no job, losing a job, trying to find a job, and being smothered by the job we have. Our bills pile up and our energy goes down just trying to meet them.

It is precisely then, when life is at its most frantic, most frightening, that we each need a place to go to, a place that wraps us around in silence and calm. No matter who we are or what we do, we need someplace we have put aside, a small, simple place we have designated as our doorway to peace, where we can sink into ourselves and find the God who awaits us there.

—from In God’s Holy Light: Wisdom from the Desert Monastics (Franciscan Media), by Joan Chittister