winter, stillness

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Love is our shared truth.
Peace is our eternal hope.

A peacemaker prays. Prayer is the beginning and the end, the source and the fruit, the core and the content, the basis and the goal for all peacemaking. I say this without apology, because it allows me to go straight to the heart of the matter, which is that peace is a divine gift, a gift we receive in prayer.

When your ears aren't filled with chatter and the cacophony of negativity, and your life is free of stress-generated mindless actions and the prolonged cleanup operations that result from the subsequent mess, then the still, small voice of spirit may be heard. The music of the universe becomes louder and louder in the silence generated by the absence of charged auto-chatter, and we are able to hear the whispered instructions of the soul, the rustle of angel wings, and the divine harmony of the spheres.'

Basking in solitude, Silence is
the Friend who stills
lurking desires, as
Wisdom cuts through tangled
webs of illusion.
Meditation lights the Flame.

An early century desert monk once shared an image:

"When the door of the steam bath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says is good ..."

Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.

Silence purifies. Those who are dedicated to silence must persevere in our over-busy world zones of purified air. We must struggle against the asphyxiation, which threatens the cities of our consumer society. We live in a world mentally polluted by verbal intoxication. If dedication to silence did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

On the surface, silence was simple: we didn't speak unless it was necessary. But what was the point of silence? The point was, we learned, not mere silence, not silence to preserve some sort of order, but something much greater. In silence the idea was to recollect ourselves, to place ourselves more squarely in the presence of God than we would if people were talking to us all the time. We could pray, we could meditate, we could contemplate.

A poem is a passionate prayer of song
with blessings from and for the faithful All,
an innocent, sacramental creation
remembering ancient tradition,
a gift of praise at an invisible altar,
and a lone priestly vision embraced
by sacred silence,
seeking forever the eternal unknown.

Poetry comes out of silence and yearns for silence. Like us, it travels from one silence to another. It is like flight, like a circling over silence.