Silence

I bought three books from Amazon last week as a Christmas present to myself. They came today and I immediately opened Small Graces by Kent Nerburn. I blogged a quote from it not too long ago that I had found on line and was so struck with it that I wanted the whole book. Here's something I just found that is both beautiful and true:

We need to pay heed to the many silences in our lives. An empty room is alive with a different silence than a room where someone is hiding. The silence of a happy house echoes less darkly than the silence of a house of brooding anger.

The silence of a winter morning is sharper than the silence of a summer dawn. The silence of a mountain pass is larger than the silence of a forest glen.

These are not fantasies; they are subtle discriminations of the senses. Though all are the absence of sound, each silence has a character of its own.

No meditation better clears the mind than to listen to the shape of the silence that surrounds us. It focuses us on the thin line between what is there and what is not there. It opens our heart to the unseen, and reminds us that the world is larger than the events that fill our days.

It is hard to find silence in our world today, just as it is hard, if we're city dwellers, to experience a night dark enough to see the stars. Our culture judges darkness and silence as that which is to be avoided. Go ahead! Be counter-cultural and do what it takes to give yourself the experience of real silence. Listen to it; be present to it. Let it envelope and teach you and sustain you.