When I was a baby my heart
was a tiny fish swimming
in a gargantuan sea of things to come.
When I was a toddler my heart
was a trout in a large lake of
thoughts and feelings.
Now my heart is becoming
a salmon ready to go to the sea
of troubles I will have to face.
When I am old my heart
will be a whale swimming
in a sea of memories.
When I die God will become
a whaler.
Lindbergh wrote more than fifty years ago, "Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions. Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives -- which tend to throw us off balance."
But our spirit has an instinct for silence. Every soul innately yearns for stillness, for a space, a garden where we can till, sow, reap, and rest, and by doing so come to a deeper sense of self and our place in the universe. Silence is not an absence but a presence. Not an emptiness but repletion. A filling up.