Silence. It’s Power. It’s Beauty.
Silence Awakens
The power and the beauty of silence in the title are not grammatical errors. Both statements are true: It is power. It is beauty.
The power from silence frees us to pay attention. Silence lets us let go of noises, words, cacophonies and other distracting sounds. That is a dual power: the power to quiet ourselves, to refrain from talk and to remain word free, and the power to listen to the quiet that surrounds our words. It really isn’t silence at all. Yet freed from bearing our words it is sometimes just as good as.That power empowers us to pay attention. To listen to hidden sounds we often overlook. The morning birds, the cat’s scratch in the litter box, a distant automobile’s hum, the rustle of leaves so faint it is almost its own silence. Silence frees those sounds that we may hear them. That brings home in unique ways our world’s peace and strength and motion.
Silence, too, is beauty. In the sound-free living room, I more readily imagine that I hear the ceiling’s corners breathing. Gently. When my voice is still and so my mind is too, freed from having to my next sentence, I can hear the fullness of my heart, hear it clear though it makes not a sound. My whispered slurp from coffee mug hardly escapes yet is the loudest sound before the day wakes up.
I substitute this beautiful, powerful word for “still”. Be silent, and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:10)
Praying to Silence
Good Friend, GOD,
Thanks that we can pray to you without words,
enjoying the stillness and
the quietness
of your Presence and our Peace.
Thank you that we can let ourselves listen
to the sounds below the silence
beyond the sounds of living out loud
and hear your blessings
all around us.
Thank you, GOD. And so it is. Amen.
Love and blessings,
1 June 2017
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