For some minutes my mind knows only a silent stillness within, a meditation without effort, a celebration of occasion. Slowly my vision focuses on a bird of red-streaked, chocolate-covered feathers and bright orange beak... I have been watching her a long while now without registering, labeling or defining her particular condensation of being, taking her as much for granted as she appears to take me. So beautiful. So natural. A bird in a tree.
The booming voices are deafening and ever present, but it is the tiny twitters that speak to my soul. The varieties of grass growing in my garden. The patterns of planets, moons, and stars. Any tiny trait about my children. The small things matter. Seeing the small things requires some semblance of sacred silence.
~ Katie, from April 2025 (Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4)