silence

All final spiritual reference is to be the silence beyond sound. The word made flesh is the first sound. Beyond that sound is the transcendent unknown, the unknowable. It can be spoken of as the great silence, or as the void, or as the transcendent absolute.

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."

... Silence itself prepares us for silence ... Give us this day our daily silence ...

Have you ever been "stricken with silence"? If so, you have tasted the ineffable; you have had a mystical experience. Silence is too often defined as "the absence of something" when it is much more than that. Silence is also a search for something, a search for the depths, for the source. Many of the mystical awakenings experienced by astronauts and cosmonauts in space have been triggered by the cosmic silence they have encountered there. Similar things happen to persons swimming in the depths of the sea or spelunking in the caves of Mother Earth. Silence moves people. That is why it is so essential to meditation practices, including the art of listening to our images. Being, one might say, is silent. We must embrace silence in order to experience being. Then -- and only then -- does it speak deep truths to us. As Rilke says: "Being-silent. Who keeps innerly silent, touches the roots of speech."

Native American Indians value silence and recommend it in stories and pointed sayings ... "Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf" ... "No flies come into a closed mouth" ... and a clause in an Indian prayer, "Oh my Grandfather, may I lose no good opportunity to hold my tongue." They feel comfortable in silence, and are often irritated, or at best amused, by our "windmill machine" of constant chatter. Silence, "going behind the blanket," removing oneself from useless or annoying contact are highly developed techniques, second nature to the Indian way.

Silence is its own reward: we do not look for any "sign" of God's presence, but as we grow in faith, we become increasingly aware of the wordless dialogue proceeding deep within us. This is the silent conversation with God that warms the heart and mobilizes the powers of the mind and spirit which we are all endowed, but which largely remain in abeyance in everyday life, until we are enabled to strike a deeper note of awareness. In other words, the effect of God's grace shows itself as we give of ourselves by what we are given, but, far from dwelling on it, we stride forward in resolution to give what we have to those around us ... There can be no effective journey on the path to the pearl of great price, until we are so inwardly posed that our attention and resolution remain in control even when the world is collapsing around us. For, real prayer -- the still point of our inner being -- never ceases ...

Granma said all Cherokees had a secret place. She told me she had one and Granpa had one. She said she reckined most everybody had a secret place, but she couldn't be certain, as she had never made inquiries of it. Granma said it was necessary. Which made me feel right good about having one ... Granma said everybody has two minds. One of the minds has to do with the necessaries for body living. She said we had to have that mind so as we could carry on. But she said we had another mind that had nothing atall to do with such. She said it was the spirit mind. Granma said if you used the body-living mind to think greedy or mean; if you was always cuttin' at folks with it and figuring how to material profit off'n them ... then you would shrink up your spirit mind to a size no bigger'n a hickor'nut.

The call of holiness is a call into the cloud of unknowing. The call to be holy is a call into the inner-most depths, to the inward center -- the stillpoint. Holiness calls us to be humble before God ... There is a saint, a holiness in each of us and the greatest journey is to discover that saint, that holiness within ... The prophet, the holy person, is the one who experiences within him or herself a presence that is so rich and meaningful that they are compelled to share it with others. The holy person, who receives the gift of him or herself, becomes almost intoxicated with the truth that everyone carries that hidden mystery ... The call of our day is to a higher consciousness, to respond to the work of God's love in us, not only in prayer, but in the kind of presence that we offer to our world and to our time, to the second creation that is always going on in us ...