Dear Friends ~ It has been fifteen years since that winter day in Vermont, in a small house on Skunk Hollow Road, when Nan Merrill placed a colorful bundle of Friends of Silence newsletters into my hands. The air outside was cold and hushed, but inside, something radiant was stirring.
"Here's my baby," she said.
In that moment, a current passed between us—silent, sure, unmistakable. It was as if something leapt from her heart into mine, not words or instructions, but a living transmission. My body trembled; my eyes filled. Later, when I found the courage to ask if she knew what had happened, Nan smiled gently. "Of course I do," she whispered. "I sent it."
She was not simply handing over a file or a task. She was entrusting a spirit--her dream of a gathered community listening for the voice of Silence in a noisy world. She wanted to know if we could hold it with tenderness, if we could let it grow without her.
Nan died the following year, but the flame she passed on has never gone out. It found new life here at Rolling Ridge, among the hills and forests that breathe the same stillness she loved. Over these fifteen years, her dream has rooted itself in many hands and hearts—Anne, Bella, Trish, Linda, Lindsay, Mary Ann, Kate, Joy, Katie, Todd, Bob, Billy and so many others who have carried forward her invitation to live as friends of Silence. Silence, Nan used to say, is not always our friend. She can be demanding, unpredictable, fierce. She draws us through surrender, through the ache of letting go, until all that remains is what is real and true. To stretch out one's hand toward Silence is to consent to be changed.
And yet, how could we wish it otherwise? These fifteen years have been a pilgrimage—of listening more deeply, of learning to trust the slow work of love, of holding this fragile and luminous "baby" as it grows in its own mysterious way.
When I think back to that day in Vermont, I realize now that Nan didn't just entrust her work to me. She entrusted it to all of us—to everyone who reads these words, who pauses each month to enter the quiet, who lets Silence do her transformative work within.
So today, as we mark fifteen years of tending Nan's flame, we give thanks for her life, for her vision, and for the living Silence that continues to call us onward.
May we keep listening.
May we keep walking.
May we keep the flame alive.
~ Bob
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.