Seeds of something fine
The voice of silence
Staff writer
Those of you who know me (or have read anything I’ve written ever ... even a sticky note) know I am not one to struggle with finding enough words. In fact, if I can’t find the right ones, I sometimes I try them all just to see what feels right once it’s said — a practice that, by the way, works much better when drafting an e-mail or letter than in conversation.
My daughter, too, has the gift of being “highly verbal.” Just ask her. She’ll proceed to tell you, almost without stopping for breath for 20 minutes, anything and everything she has encountered in her brief 2 years that she thinks relates to the topic of conversation you’ve presented. And if you think you can simply sit and nod in response you haven’t met many verbal toddlers.
She will repeat key phrases, often at increasing volume or with growing urgency, until you respond in some way she deems sufficient.
“Mommy, you OK?” is a many-times-daily question in our house and if I don’t respond immediately with something longer than a “yup” this question becomes a shrill, panicked plea of “MOMMY, YOU OKAAAAAY?!?!?!”
“Yes Lyla, Mommy’s OK and Lyla’s OK and Daddy’s OK and the dogs are OK and everybody’s doing just fine.”
Add to this constant back-and-forth — which, yes, produces some of the most charmed moments of parenting for me, but also keeps me from being able to maintain any train of thought longer than 30 seconds — the frequent barking of my dogs, the beep of my cell phone with every e-mail and text message, the wail of an ambulance siren that sends all beings in my house under 3 feet tall into orbit, the buzz of my own mind thinking of all I have to get done that day, the voices in my head saying, “Stop that! You’re missing the good stuff!” and on and on, and the noise I deal with on a daily basis is nothing short of a torturous din.
So, imagine my delight when I learned that, following a recent dental procedure, talking would be a bit of a challenge the first 24 to 48 hours. Well, I thought, that will never do in my house, who else can holler above all the crazy? So, off the weebob went to Mimi’s house. And lo and behold I “forgot” to charge my cell phone Friday morning. And, somehow, the universe saw fit to bless me with two peaceful pups, napping away in the sunshine most of Friday.
It was then I encountered a dear, old, loving friend I have ached for for a couple of years now without being able to put my finger on what was missing — silence.
In college I had a wonderful soul-friend who introduced me to Frederick Buechner and read to me one evening some his thoughts on the importance of silence, which he has written about at great length.
I don’t remember the exact words she read that night, but I do remember I came away with a physical sensation of the weight, the gravity, of taking time for silence in one’s life.
Friday I awoke without an alarm to brilliant mid-morning sun on my bed and a breeze dancing in the curtains. True, it was some pretty serious dental pain that awoke me, but I was prepared.
I stayed in bed for a long time — listening. To the neighborhood. To the heartbeats of my own home (refrigerator, clock, etc.). To the birds and squirrels. To the wind breathing fresh air into my home. I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. It was the closest I’ve come to a meditation practice since my daughter was born.
Soon, the hour came when the birds were still, the passing cars were rare, and the appliances in the house were mum. True silence.
This was the friend I had missed. The kind of silence that is actively cultivated, the kind of nothing that fills a room with so much ... something. Space, but not in the way of lack of something, more like an abundance of opportunity for things that too easily hang in the background behind the daily din to emerge.
Usually what surfaces has a great deal more to do with what I actually need than whatever I’m busying my brain with, trying to keep life together.
In the days before motherhood (what we call B.C. — Before the Crazy) my heart almost didn’t know how to beat without this kind of time and space to listen.
Friday, I found a great deal of stillness, of quiet. I found room for things to move in my tired brain. And like air rushing to fill a great lung, I felt a great shhhhhh fill my person.
It is here my higher self finally has room to speak. Y’know, that part of you that is always there beneath the mishmash of trivialities that often bog us down? The part of you that sees down the corridor of years, knows the arc of your story, and is not shaken by circumstances. For me, it’s the part that has capacity for access to divine wisdom, which often presents in metaphor because the denotative meaning of everyday words cannot hold the truth it tries to speak.
I like to think of it as my inner Grandmother Willow and now you have proof, in print, that I’m a little nuts. The phrases I hear are not usually original to my own Grandmother Willow mind; they come from books I’ve read, music I’ve heard, advice of earth-bound saints, and other scraps of gold I’ve gathered throughout my life.
Friday, there was nothing. Not even a refrain or poem. Just the gentle sound of hush.
A lovely, quiet, peace. I bathed in it. Soaked it into my bones.
Until a lawn mower started up somewhere.
Later I pulled Buechner’s “Godric” from my shelf and found these words underlined in dark black ink:
“The voice of silence calls, ‘Be still and hear,’ poor dunce … The empty well within your heart calls too. It says, ‘Be full.’”
And full I was.