A Call to Greater Silence

This New Year is calling me to greater Silence...

 I awaken several times this week, as the first rays of dawn trickle into my bedroom - slyly coaxing me to rouse - beckoning me to meditation and quiet contemplation, and to the recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours, in solidarity with monastic communities everywhere...

 I move about this day - in total Silence...

 Everything I seem to stumble upon in my reading brings me back to the importance and necessity of Silence in this point and time...

 From those first rays of dawn to the first inkling of twilight - my day progresses - with its many domestic duties gently unfolding and spilling into each other, in total and simple Silence...

 I speak not a word, to anyone - save for my prayers, internally voiced, which I lay at the feet of the Divine...

 It is truly delicious for me in every way!

 Yes, I feel a call to greater Silence, to Quiet, to drawing more deeply Inward, and to spending less time online with its many distractions...

 In the evenings, after dinner, I sit down with a cup of tea and choose to read instead. Lord knows I have accumulated enough books to populate a library many times over, so there is  certainly enough reading to entertain me for the rest of my life!

 Silence beckons, and in the richness of its embrace, I strive to LISTEN!

 I Listen, I let go - I create space...

 I remind myself to bless circumstances, people, and every troublesome thought that arises in my mind, and that is not to say this is an easy task, but it is necessary to my own growth and well-being...

 I bless the spaces between myself and those relationships in need of repair. I bless those souls that have come and gone in my life - and those I must now release...

 In the Silence I cleanse my body and my heart - to make more room for the Divine to reside and for whatever is to come...
"The quieter you become,
the more you are able to hear."
~ Rumi
In Silence   

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your
Name.

Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence
Are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not 
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) Be
The unthinkable one.
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

"I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can one be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can one dare
To sit with them
When all their silence is on fire?"

~ Thomas Merton

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