Thoughts by David
Ever cried … really cried? I thought I had cried, more when I was a little kid, because of a fastball to my leg or head, or because I had fallen over an embankment. Now here I was uncontrollably crying. Actually it was uncontrollable sobbing. My friend (we were both college students) invited me to her college, and she asked me to wait for her by a tree in a cordoned off area. The area was surrounded by large, clear Plexiglas windows totally surrounding the tree and the area called the Cloisters. So I patiently and quietly waited. Slowly I became aware of the deep penetrating silence and had never experienced anything even remotely like this sensation. After a while I started crying and it became louder and more intense. Then all of a sudden it was sobbing. My friend rushed up to me – "What's wrong?" she asked. "Are you okay?" I tried to reassure her I was okay.
So why was I so deeply, profoundly sobbing? Upon later reflection … and I do mean MUCH later … I came to realize it was because I had never known this deep profound silence, that silence which gives us renewed understanding.
The idea of silence had always been tied in my mind to an attitude parents, neighbors, and teachers had toward children during my childhood. This attitude was often repeated in the phrase that "children should be seen and not heard." But when children are seen and not heard, anger grows. All of us need to be nurtured.
I had felt the stillness … silence … as in a church, where the sun sends light streaming into a dark, otherwise cold building. Suddenly the building is transformed as the shaft of light hits and reflects the microscopic specks of dust. It is spellbinding and attaches to the energy, the silence, the experience which brings about sometimes nothing, other times awareness, still other times the sheer force of the awareness of beauty.
So go into the silence, to sturdy yourself against your day. Go into the silence to get wisdom ...from the peace ... that passeth understanding. Or go as I unexpectedly did, but go. Pushing, doing, striving, has to be but a part of a larger picture, that of wholeness. Silence gives us time to process, time to forgive, time to understand, and be grateful.