As part of his daily meditation routine, the man read, “Grace is when nothing creates something,” and just before that he read, “Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher and mystic, said centuries ago, ‘All human evil comes from this: our inability to sit still in a chair for half an hour.’”

“If you think this is an exaggeration,” further wrote the good Reverend Rohr, “a recent study at the University of Virginia said that 67% of men and 25% of women would sooner endure an unpleasant electric shock rather than be alone in silence for even 15 minutes!”

“Are you ready, dear?” the man asked his wife as he routinely readied for his morning’s jog, but then he tore his meniscus.

The good physician said, “Not too bad; give it three or four months and it should be good as new.”

“Three, four months?” he asked with irritability, irritation and impatience.

“You’re lucky.” was all the doc said, but it would take him a while to realize that and that that wasn’t exactly what the orthopedic surgeon meant. The physician, surely meant surgery, but his “fortunate” injury would bless him in other ways.

And so he sat, and sat and sat with book in hand and then revelation struck — he began to like what he wasn’t doing thanks to his knee. Something was coming out of nothing.

He liked the stillness of the day; losing himself in the mind of writers and snoozing and being.

It is the winter solstice — the time to follow the sun; but he cannot jump in the car and head for parts south and west to seek that elusive light, as he had planned.

But he can sit in his chair, leg up on the ottoman and snooze and read and drink gourmet coffee in the morning and a cocktail in the evening as the days would grow longer and one day, he would, by the grace of God, jog again.

He wondered if the 67% of men and 25% of women harkened so dearly after Pascal’s notion of evil that they would even be willing to submit to the “enhanced interrogation techniques” of Dick “Darth” Cheney. No not Darth, he thought. Darth found redemption. Vader had moved toward the light.

Oh, forget that heart of darkness, he ruminated. There are better ways just to “be” in the glow and stillness of “now” as the age-old but ever trusting and hopeful celebrations for the return of the sun would soon begin outside his door.