Newsletters

Dear Friends ~ In another corner of my life, I teach what I call Baby's First Research Paper classes to middle school students. Recently I guided two dozen tweens through a project creating timelines of the people and events that made possible an invention of their choosing. Their topics ranged from toasters and the Slinky, to water purifiers, baseball mitts, and seat belts.

"Hope Is the Hardest Love We Carry":
Reflections on light, darkness, and the courage to stay

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.

Dear Friends ~ Is it strange to envy a turtle? Not just turtles in general—I'm referring to the specific Terrapene carolina Carolina (box turtle) who took up residence in the tall grasses behind the woodshed this summer. She and I often crossed paths, especially in the morning hours while she bathed and sipped from the puddles in the gravel road. I liked to crouch, peer into her wary amber eyes, and make small talk about the weather.

Dear friends ~ “This isn't the world I want to live in." The thought echoes in my mind as I close the news app, the messaging app, the email app. My lungs wrestle down a gasp of humid Appalachia air in response to the endless feed of Apocalypse I just conjured with thumb swipes across a screen.

No, not Apocalypse. They are, in fact, creation stories. What else to call it when a group of people assesses the world and says, “We want it to look different than this," and then imagines a new paradigm into existence? From idea...to fruition. Creation.

Dear Friends ~ Over the past several months, I've been gathering these quotes and now offer them to you as nourishment for the journey. I hope they bring insight, encouragement, and moments of stillness along the way. ~ Bob

In addition to our monthly newsletter, you're warmly invited to sign up for a free daily quote from Friends of Silence – a gentle yet powerful way to begin your day with reflection and intention.

Dear Friends ~ My window looks over the neighbors' rooftops to the poplars, box elders, oaks, pines of the woods that rim our village. The morning is gray, slashed with bitter rain. The harsh winds of a March storm toss the tree limbs hither and yon. Their tender buds must be clinging with all their tiny might. The chaotic flailing mirrors these times and the thrashing of both culture and nature. It feels, it is, dire. But the storm is not everything.

Dear Friends ~ I wake before dawn. The sky outside the window holds an unrelieved grayness after a long night. January has always seemed to me to be a dark month. The candlelight and fires of Christmas have receded, leaving the dark and the cold. Yes, I know that the nights are shortening, that the light is returning. I know that January holds Epiphany, the feast of the Star, of Wise Ones who recognized God nestled and nursing within the circle of embodied Love and Belonging. I understand that the ancients considered the dark as revelatory as a sunrise.

Dear Friends ~ This season of Thanksgiving sings with resonance in my soul. I am grateful to live in an intentional community where we all have our tasks and teams to keep things running smoothly. I'm on the garden team, blessed to come together with others to plant, water, weed, and—indeed—harvest both bounty and beauty.

Dear friends~ This next year my beloved and I will be married 50 years. I have "known" Jackie for more than 53 years, and yet I can still wake up beside her in the morning and realize that this person whom I have walked with over the decades is still a mystery and so much unknown. The truth is that we are growing old together. But if we can embrace our physical diminishment with gentleness and grace, our heart's surrender becomes, as Jackie calls it, "the sacrament of diminishment." This morning she gave me a folder full of her favorite quotes about relationship and love.

Dear friends~ Slower, slower. Poorer, poorer. Smaller. Smaller.

This is slow work. It begins in poverty, and we become smaller, until we have enough being to be nothing. ~Bob

Dear Friends ~ Each spring the seeds stir and push up tender shoots through the warming soil; buds swell, lining the tree limbs like tiny jewels. All around there are signs that the Earth is renewing herself, that the Holy relationship of loving reciprocity endures. This is more than reassuring, because by now we must see that we are witnessing the unraveling of the sustaining systems of a myriad of worlds and realms. How shall we make sense of this? Old stories may help.

Dear Friends ~ Warmth sweeps across the globe in its own time, as does the cold. Wet or dry spells make their ecological homes, then ebb away. As I greet you, dear readers, February is inviting winter in all its glory, despite its chilly inconveniences. It's a time to draw in close to the fire, to snuggle up with a good book, or brave the elements, swooping down the slopes, gliding across the ice, building a perfect snow man or woman with young loved ones, or admiring the beauty of transformed terrain.

Dear Friends ~ December has always been a darkening month in the Northern Hemisphere, marking the descent into winter; not so long ago it meant increasing hunger as well as fading light. No wonder it is the time when in our bellies and bones we long for the sun's return. We observe the season of Advent, yearning for the arrival of the Holy Incarnate, the One who fills us. Now, I wonder, has there ever been a December this dark? I look and look, and find no supernovas, only a pinprick of light in an ebony night.