There is a certain relevance to life
that is hard to hear in the business of the day.
The past and future come pounding on my brain.
It is in the time I spend alone with God
that I tune my soul to the music of the dance.
I can begin to hear the song
in the most wondrous places,
in the most unexpected circumstances.
I am called to the rhythm
and even if no one else has ears,
I enter in the song.
Fasting from words, fasting from a volume of speech, being willing to humbly accept the yoke of silence and quietude deprives the tongue of the mastery of our hearts and minds. The tongue is a very useful tool for the art of love and for the art of prayer, but it is also the means by which we afflict others and even our own selves so often. So it must be called into holy obedience.