The dream of my life Is to lie down by a slow river And stare at the light in the trees — To learn something by being nothing A little while but the rich Lens of attention.
~ Mary Oliver from "Entering the Kingdom" in DEVOTIONS
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Individuals live, as in a cell, in the narrow world of the words they utter -- every individual and every group. Words are no longer bridges linking the one to the other. Speech which is not heard only intensifies isolation and increases the babel of tongues. the clever ones profit by this. Less and less a helpful servant and more and more an instrument of propaganda, speech has become the vehicle for uneasy consciences. Words must be purified in a redemptive silence if they are to bear the message of peace ... For, a soul gathered in silent worship is never alone with God. It is always in communion with the soul of all other worshippers; its plunges it into that inward light which lightens every person."
~ from GOD IS SILENCE by Pierre Lacout with thanks to Donald and Lesley Holmes