On Silence

The last two weeks I have been with family, choosing not to write.

It has meant that I’ve had a few more minutes of silence, particularly in the mornings.

I love this passage on silence, from Cheryl Sanders-Sardello from the book, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness.

The enormity of life’s tasks weigh and press on the day. They demand and insist on a constancy of attention that is relentless. Ah, but we are fortunate to have night’s solace–in the silence that is created by the dark.

Night, that melancholy time, when the stars remind us of the silence of God. here we can remember the future, and lean into the unknown, setting aside the oppressive weight of our carefully constructed version of who we think we are, and release that side of the pool. We can remember how to see in the dark, with our ears, perceiving the silence in its holy echoing and resonance, its calling forth a knowing that is from the soul.

The silence sends us on a different pilgrimage. It guards the heart’s fire and teaches us to speak from within, with a language that is imbued with the sacred. Words thus nurtured in this holy silence fly forth with the wings of joy, and return to lead us back to the silence from which they were born.

 

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