October 2024 (Vol. XXXVII, No. 9)

Dear Friends ~ I wish to speak about joy. In this season there is plenty to be joyful about: crisp mornings, mist rising from the river, trees bright with autumn glory, the faces of children sticky with caramel apples. Yet even as the scent of cinnamon lingers in the air, and grandchildren snuggle in for a fireside story on a gently darkening evening, we know that all is not well in our world. The trouble we are in as an Earth community is severe and seemingly inexorable. This is when joy ripens beyond a heartfelt response of wonder and gratitude and deepens into an act of resistance: a fierce joy rooted in humus, in sorrow, in edges, in life Herself, in the One whom Nan Merrill called the Beloved. This is the joy that enables us to live fearlessly and robustly, to set out boldly to make a road by walking, to laugh immeasurably though we have considered all the facts. To invoke this joy we turn to the soul-criers: the storytellers, sages, and poets who bear witness to the truth that there is always more going on than we can know.

This, dear friends, is the mission and vocation of the Friends of Silence Letter: to bring you the voices who will sing joy into your soul and make it possible for you and all you love to thrive even in dark times. This is the issue in which we appeal to you to keep the Letter coming into the world. Please use the link on our website to send us a donation. May you ever live in joy. ~ Lindsay

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Psalm 27

Love is my light and
my salvation,
whom shall I fear?...

One thing have I asked of Love,
that I shall ever seek:
That I might dwell in the
Heart of Love
All the days of my life,

To behold the Beauty of my Beloved...

Call upon the Beloved,
be strong and trust
in the heart's courage.
Trust in the power of Love;
the Beloved's unconditional and
everlasting love for you.

~ Nan Merrill, from her interpretation of "Psalm 27" in PSALMS FOR PRAYING

Nan Merrill Psalms For Praying joy

Here is the world

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.

~ Frederick Buechner in BEYOND WORDS: DAILY READINGS IN THE ABC's OF FAITH

Frederick Buechner BEYOND WORDS: DAILY READINGS IN THE ABC's OF FAITH joy

There are doors

In the universe there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.

~ William Blake in THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL

William Blake THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL joy

What if that is joy?

Is sorrow the true wild?

And if it is—and if we join them—
your wild to mine—what's that?

For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrows, I'm saying.
I'm saying: What if that is joy?

~ Ross Gay in THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS

Ross Gay The Book Of Delights joy

Marginal

This is where I live,
at the edge of this ploughed field
where sunlight catches meadow grasses
and turns them silver-yellow....

I prefer it here, at the line
where the forest intersects
the field, where deer and groundhog
move back and forth to feed
and hide. On these juts and outcroppings
I can look both ways, moving
As that crow does, all gracelessness
and sway....

This life is not easy,
but wings mix up with leaves there,
like the moment when surf turns into
undertow or breaker, and I can
poise myself and hold
for a long time, profoundly
neither one place nor another.

~ Maggie Anderson, from "Marginal" in WINDFALL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

Maggie Anderson WINDFALL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS joy

The strange path

I am quite confident that even as the oceans boil, and the hurricanes beat violently against our once safe shores, and the air sweats with the heat of impending doom...that there is a path to take that has nothing to do with victory or defeat: a place we do not yet know the coordinates to; a question we do not yet know how to ask. The point of the departed arrow is not merely to pierce the bullseye and carry the trophy: the point of the arrow is to sing the wind and remake the world in the brevity of flight. ... May this new decade be remembered as the decade of the strange path, of the third way, ...the kairotic moment... that opened up new places of power.

~ Bayo Akomolafe

Bayo Akomolafe joy

It is not too late to love

In times like these, many things become too late...It will be too late to save this coastline or that ecosystem, this city or that species, this democracy or that economy. But it is not too late to love, and it never will be. Love will count, no matter what. Even on the last day of the world.

~ Brian McLaren in LIFE AFTER DOOM: WISDOM AND COURAGE FOR A WORLD FALLING APART

Brian McLaren LIFE AFTER DOOM: WISDOM AND COURAGE FOR A WORLD FALLING APART joy

Fluent in the manners and ways of soul

We have entered a time of descent that takes us down into a different geography. In this shadowed terrain, we encounter a landscape familiar to soul—loss, grief, death, vulnerability, and fear...This is not a time of rising and growth. It is not a time of confidence and ease. No. We are hunkered down. Down being the operative word. From the perspective of soul, down is holy ground...

How can we meet these unpredictable times with any sense of presence and faith?
To do so, we must become fluent in the manners and ways of soul. We are required to develop another set of skills and ways of seeing as we descend ever further into the collective unknown. We are being asked to hone the faculties of soul that will enable us to navigate through the Long Dark....

~ Francis Weller in IN THE ABSENCE OF THE ORDINARY

Francis Weller IN THE ABSENCE OF THE ORDINARY joy

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. ...Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts...Practice resurrection.

~ Wendell Berry, from "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in THE COUNTRY OF MARRIAGE

Wendell Berry THE COUNTRY OF MARRIAGE joy

Walking you make the road

Walker, your footsteps
are the road, and nothing more.
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
Walking you make the road,
and turning to look behind
you see the path you never
again will step upon.
Walker, there is no road,
only foam trails on the sea.

~ Antonio Machado in BORDER OF A DREAM

Antonio Machado BORDER OF A DREAM joy

Sowing Seeds

An expression of faith
In life Herself
Is to sow seeds into dark soil
Not knowing what awaits.
Returning to the patience
Reverence
Grace
Humility
Practiced by our ancestors...
Reminding me to wake up amidst the confusion
To do what must be done to feed the children.
To tuck vibrant seeds into fertile soil
And patiently tend the garden,...
The garden that our ancestors left for us is beautiful.
May we water it well with our tears and our laughter, our stories, and our songs.

Today I choose to plant seeds of hope into the winds of an unknown future...
It's a New dawn.
The time to be those ancestors our grandchildren are waiting for is upon us.
What seeds are you sowing?

~ Rowen White, from "Sowing Seeds"

Rowen White joy

And All I've Got Is a Love Poem

How rare and beautiful it is that we exist. What if we stun existence one more time?... The earth remembers everything, our bodies are the color of the earth and we are nobodies. Been born from so many apocalypses, what's one more? Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire. But for what it's worth, I'd do this again. Gamble on humanity one hundred times over. Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them. I'd follow love into extinction.

~ Ayisha Siddiqa, from "On Another Panel About Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I've Got Is a Love Poem"

Ayisha Siddiqa joy

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Quote of the Day

In the immense field of divine compassion, countless small life fields are interwoven with each other. When human hearts deepen through some form of contemplation, there emerges in them an intuition of human oneness prior to all separation ... a "communion of saints". In each religion's communal story, there is a way of handing on from generation to generation this transforming perception of universal solidarity in the Mystery. We do not learn such wisdom on our own. We receive this wisdom from someone else.

~ Carolyn Gratton in THE ART OF SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE