Can you hear the music?
Can you hear the sound
Of the life that floats by on the wind
Or comes up through the ground?
Its strange enchanting rhythm
Will bring your soul release.
You will hear it and then suddenly
All you've ever known is peace.
Oh, listen to the symphony;
Every note is a new world.
Listen to the music of your destiny
As it unfolds.
To deliver oneself up, to hand
oneself over, entrust oneself
completely to the silence of a
wide landscape of woods and
hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still
while the sun comes up over that
land and fills its silences with
light. To pray and work in the
morning and to labor and rest in
the afternoon, and to sit still
again in meditation in the
evening when night falls upon
that land and when the silence
fills itself with darkness and with
stars. This is a true and special
vocation. There are few who are
willing to belong completely to
such silence, to let it soak into
their bones, to breathe nothing
but silence, to feed on silence,
and to turn the very substance of
their life into a living and
vigilant silence.
~ from THOUGHTS IN SOLITUDE by Thomas Merton