Sixty Years and the Sound of a Rooster - Part II

Warming at Another Fire

“When they had kindled a fire of coals there… Peter stood with them, and warmed himself.”

John 18:18

You would think at sixty a man would know the difference between warmth and fire.

The rooster has already crowed once in my life. It crowed when I realized how much of my priesthood was constructed out of activity. It crowed when the doors closed, when requests were denied, when the scaffolding of identity began to fall. It crowed when I saw how often I had spoken about silence without having been fully formed by it.

Now it crows again.

Alone with the Alone.

It is a strange thing to be drawn toward silence as toward a lover and yet tremble before it as before a judge. There is agitation in me still. Old reflexes reach for distraction the way fingers reach for a familiar rosary in the dark. I move toward the noise, the scrolling, the conversation, the easy exchange of words. But when I get there, I cannot enter. The room is empty. The fire is ash. The warmth is false.

The distractions no longer console. They no longer even sedate. They simply expose their own poverty.

And so I withdraw.

The dog snores lightly. The grandfather clock marks the hour with a steady, merciful chime. There is something almost sacramental in such sounds. They belong. They do not intrude. They keep vigil with me. But the traffic outside feels foreign now, like a language I once spoke fluently but can no longer understand.

My heart longs for the country. Not romantically. Not as escape. But as consonance. Wind in the trees. Birds that do not argue. Darkness that is not neon but vast and honest. Stars that do not advertise but burn in silence.

I love the groups on the Fathers. I love the faces on the screen. I love their hunger, their sincerity, their tears when St. Isaac or Abba Isaiah pierces them. There is grace there. Real grace. And yet beneath that love there is another cry, deeper and more insistent.

Silence.

Not as discipline. Not as aesthetic. Not as brand.

Silence as survival.

There is a whisper within me that cuts sharper than any shout. It does not argue. It does not accuse. It simply calls. And because it is so quiet, it is terrifying. If it were loud, I could debate it. If it were dramatic, I could dismiss it as emotion. But it is steady. Like a star. Like a pulse.

I have lost the desire for almost everything else.

Not the gray flatness of depression. Not the deadening of anhedonia. But a strange clarity. A knowing that what I once called life was often motion without depth. Noise without presence. Ministry without enough hiddenness. Words that did not always rise from the deepest place of prayer.

I know now there is Someone within arm’s reach.

Fullness.

Meaning.

Peace.

Not conceptually. Not theologically. But almost physically. As if Christ stands just beyond the veil of my own fear. As if He waits not with rebuke but with unbearable tenderness.

And still I linger by another fire.

That is the hell of it.

The in-between.

Not fully in the world, unable to return to its consolations. Not yet fully surrendered to the silence that strips and exposes and heals. Suspended between two climates. Neither cold nor warm. Familiar with the language of renunciation but not yet having burned the ships.

Casually warming myself.

The rooster cries and I feel it in my bones. Not as condemnation but as invitation. Do you love Me more than these? More than your words? More than your teaching? More than the comfort of being needed? More than the subtle warmth of recognition?

More than the fire of others?

At sixty, the question is no longer theoretical. There is less time for experiments. Less patience for half-measures. The ego grows tired of defending itself. The old ambitions look small. Even the noble ones.

What remains is stark.

Christ alone.

And the terror of that word alone.

To embrace Him without buffer. Without the insulation of constant output. Without the identity of teacher, guide, thinker, priest in the public sense. To let the silence dismantle what still seeks to be seen. To let the hidden life become not a theme but a fact.

There is a part of me that wants to run back to the noise just to avoid the nakedness of that encounter. And yet when I approach the noise, it tastes like dust.

So here I stand. Between fires.

The rooster has crowed.

The night is not yet over.

The dog snores. The clock keeps watch. Traffic passes like a distant tide. And in the center of it all there is a Presence so near that it almost hurts.

Alone with the Alone.

Lord, do not let me warm myself at another fire.

Strip me of the need to be heard.

Strip me of the need to be known.

Strip me even of the need to explain my silence.

If I must pass through this in-between world that feels like hell, let it be the hell that purifies Peter, not the one that hardens Judas.

Let the next crow of the rooster find me not by another fire, but weeping — and then following You into whatever country You choose.

Even if it is silence.

Especially if it is silence.