"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Blessings in and of the Silence, dear friends!
In silence and solitude you will come to meet the Beloved of your heart. For Silence is power, the power of the Divine Lover blesswing and, in the depths, transformin gyou. Seek always the Eternal Flame ever shining in your heart. And let yourself be nourished and refreshed in the Silence.
I sat in the cafeteria alone wallowing in the quiet. I didn't realize how much I missed being silently alone. This place is full of noise. Hard noises and constant noises. Prison is full of people, angry people and people afraid, but always people crowded in rooms and herded like cattle from place to place. I sat down in the cafeteria and closed my eyes and felt God in the silence. I stayed there until they made me leave.
Be silent about great things;
Let them grow inside you.
With my rent miraculously taken care of, my life went deeply inward. I hardly spoke for over a year. Many visitors came, sat in silence, and left. Sometimes I spoke, but mostly I did not. The unwritten rule seemed to be that I would not speak out of discomfort or fear of silence. I would speak only when I felt that somehow a compassionate word might help someone I was with. Fasting, silence, and reading defined my life for several years... I didn't know if I was giving myself to foolishness or saintliness.
Silence is the indispensable climate for all revelation;
noise renders it absolutely impossible.
We are often bombarded by so many extraneous stimuli that it is difficult to pray, much less remain attentive in the silence. I can't help but wonder how many times God has called my name and has caught me in my distraction. Perhaps the sum and substance of our conversations with God are being able to talk together as we would with our closest friend. In any good conversation, there are moments of silence -- intimate silences filled with the comfort of the presence of the other.
Let candles burn, both warm and bright,
Which to our darkness Thou has brought,
When we are wrapped in silence most profound,
May we hear that song most fully raised
From all the Unseen World that lies around
And Thou art by all Thy children praised.
Night and morning, You are by us faithfully
And surely at each newborn day.
"In my family there was much speaking and much silence. The speaking of words flowed from the speaking of our silences."
"What then is silence?"
"It is being. Spoken language and silence are keys."
"Keys to what?"
"To communion."
"What do you mean by communion?"
"At-oneness. each individual IS a word. As you are a word to me. As we are all words for one another."
What are the fruits of silence?
They are self-control, truth, courage or endurance,
patience, dignity, and reverence.
Silence is the cornerstone of character.
For sheer adventure, exploring the inner space of the human spirit has to equal the exploration of outer space. Inner space holds a realm of existence not readily apparent when we are in the grip of the strident external world. A powerful launching vehicle for the discovery of the realm within is silence. It is in the vessel of silence that inner transformation can occur.
We are all joined in the holiness of the mind that God created. I therefore never consider myself alone in the silence. I'm 90 and live alone in a four room house surrounded by open space. I have no T and have always luxuriated in silence. The exterior silence is here. The i8nterior silence is a work in progress.
Beside a river, in a spell
Of utter silence, there am I.
Alone I sit within a cell:
The midnight hours are passing by ...
I gaze into the distance, staying
Focused on night's formlessness;
The heart is begging to be praying --
In holy calm, how effortless!
All problems seem so far from me;
The world seem foreign and unreal.
Up in the heavens, You I see;
Within my heart, deep peace I feel.
Friends,
the wise tell us that God abides in silence --
that God speaks in the silent serenity of the heart.
Let us not speak of silence; rather,
let silence speak to us of God.
Together, let us enter through the door of serenity,
the silence of our heart: a heart that is free,
peaceful, quiet and calm, a heart that is one ...
a heart so large and wide it embraces God
of all and the all of God,
the God who in silence speaks all languages,
the God who in silence speaks in all creatures,
the God who in silence speaks one word:
the God who speaks of Love.
Those who practice a watch of silence each day find their devotion takes them into ever-deepening realizations of God's immediate presence.
Silent watch periods are momentous opportunities that call for alert, expectant, and reverent participation. They are a foundation for prayer and an altar of awareness in the temple of reception.
They constitute the practice of our realization of God's immediate presence. The high moment of silence is that of consciously realizing God's envelopment.
Listen to Love's speech in God's wondrous,
terrible, gentle, loving, all-embracing
SILENCE.
Begin each day anchored in stillness, taking nothing for granted, open to whatever the coming day's gift may be. Listen to the silence for ten minutes or so and realize how filled it is, filled with the breath of God! Su8ch silence wants to draw from you a quiet prayer that leans on that presence and seeks to harken to it throughout the day.