Does stillness feel like a straight jacket to you, too?
When people find out I’ve published a faith-based title, they often ask, Do you meditate? “I pray,” I tell them. This is usually met with an uncomfortable silence or, “Oh.” Then crickets. People, it seems, aren’t quite sure what to do with prayer. Meditation is the in thing. It’s so much more … accepted, inoffensive, […]
Nine Kinds of Generous
“Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each,” writes Paul Goodman in the Nine Kinds of Silence. “There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, […]
The Third Dimension
Lord, you pull me upward as circumstances pull me outward. Lo, there is a third dimension. Downward. Bent in silence. Focus me there. Where I am Deeply dependent on you.
Restorative Circle: Listening in Love
There’s just something about sitting in a circle. Where everyone faces everyone. There’s no front row and no back row. No first and no last. In fact, no ordination at all. Everyone is equal and opposite the other — literally. This was my first experience with what Alta Vista Elementary School calls a “restorative circle.” […]
What is Silence?
Silence. not, “Quiet!” not, “Enough already!” not, “Shut the ____ up!” These leave a ringing in the ears that deafens. Dulls the senses. Obliterates the moment. Castigates the quiet. Silence, you are not this. Silence, neither are you the quiet left by absence, which shutters the senses. You ring hollow, mournful, empty. Silence, you are […]
When Words Undo Us, Silence Speaks
“To have a good day, one must be willing not only to do things, but to let other things go undone.” During our ramp up to the holidays that’s an oft used expression. Don’t DO so much. When opportunities become obligations, our energy is sapped and the glow goes right out of the season. Simplify, […]
What Harvest Would the Silence Bring?
27 years in a cell. A man found guilty, given time to consider, in silence. His circumstances insisted he “search realistically and regularly the processes of (his) own mind and feelings.” What if we were sentenced to hard labor on the rock pile of life? With only ourselves and our fellow laborers for company. What then? […]
Hearing my name in the silence
I admit I love the sound of the silence when you close the door and no one else is home. (Thank you for this notion from Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth ~ one of my favorite books of all time.) Today this feels especially so. My young adults have returned from their schooling endeavors and have descended […]
