Have you ever been "stricken with silence"? If so, you have tasted the ineffable; you have had a mystical experience. Silence is too often defined as "the absence of something" when it is much more than that. Silence is also a search for something, a search for the depths, for the source. Many of the mystical awakenings experienced by astronauts and cosmonauts in space have been triggered by the cosmic silence they have encountered there. Similar things happen to persons swimming in the depths of the sea or spelunking in the caves of Mother Earth. Silence moves people. That is why it is so essential to meditation practices, including the art of listening to our images. Being, one might say, is silent. We must embrace silence in order to experience being. Then -- and only then -- does it speak deep truths to us. As Rilke says: "Being-silent. Who keeps innerly silent, touches the roots of speech."
Each new season evokes a resurgence of new energy, a new beginning. We know that from the darkness and deep silence of earth life, there springs and flourishes that which flowers in beauty. When we plant bulbs in the Fall, we have faith that from that brown globe rooted in decay will come a creation so charged with beauty as to seem a veritable breath of God. And, we can trust that each of our fears and problems, rooted in God-soil deep within, will bring forth blossoms in due season.