Linda Douty

Silence is the training ground for the art of listening. Engaging the silence may be one of the most important and productive things you can do for spiritual deepening.

I know for us compulsive, productive, extroverted types, this is a tall order. The bottom line is -- it's worth it. But we have to believe that it really matters. In our culture, silence and stillness have been equated with wasting time, doing nothing, being lazy. NOT TRUE. Think of it this way -- the silence of meditation is not the silence of a graveyard; it is the silence of a garden growing.

Nothing has the potential to move us off dead center quite as powerfully as unexpected encounters in nature. From the meadows to the mountaintops, from the devoted pet to the flight of the bumblebee--the ways that nature nurtures us bring tears to our eyes and resolve to our hearts. And we are often brought into the place of allowing the spirit to finally get through to us. The possibilities are endless--the motion of the tides, the cleansing of a rainstorm, the dormancy of winter--all remind us that a force greater than ourselves turns the clock of this universe. Nature immerses us in that power.

When I first began to enter the Silence, it felt like an alien atmosphere filled with menacing voices, capricious thoughts, uncomfortable feelings. But as the days and weeks passed, the Silence became a welcoming friend, a presence like the warmth of a fire in which I encountered the Divine Lover of my soul and experienced my Self as God's Beloved.