Tag: Silence

An Advent Threshold: Waiting in Silence

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We have waited in silence
on your loving-kindness,
O God.
~Psalm 48:8

…it should be that of your inner self,
the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit,
which is of great worth in God’s sight.
~1 Peter 3:4

The Lord is in his holy temple;
    let all the earth be silent before him.
Habakkuk 2:20

Then hear now the silence
He comes in the silence
in silence he enters
the womb of the bearer
in silence he goes to
the realm of the shadows
redeeming and shriving
in silence he moves from
the grave cloths, the dark tomb
in silence he rises
ascends to the glory
leaving his promise
leaving his comfort
leaving his silence

So come now, Lord Jesus
Come in your silence
breaking our noising
laughter of panic
breaking this earth’s time
breaking us breaking us
quickly Lord Jesus
make no long tarrying

When will you come
and how will you come
and will we be ready
for silence
your silence
~Madeleine L’Engle “Ready for Silence”

When worries overwhelm and fretting becomes fearsome,
I need quieting.
When the noise of news headlines screams for my attention,
I seek quieting.
When there is sadness, conflict, tragedy, illness, estrangement,
I weep for quieting.
When too many balls are juggled at once, and the first one is dropped with three more in the air,
I long for quieting.
When the ache lasts too long, the tiredness lingers, the heart skips a beat, and one too many symptoms causes anxiety,
I pray for quieting.
When tempted and ready for surrender, forgetting my confidence, conviction, commitment and faith,
I am desperate for quieting.

So come now, Lord, to our human threshold,
clothed in our weakness,
to carry us back home.

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between heaven and earth

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

Peace, peace, peace on earth
and good will to men
This is a time for joy
This is a time for love
Now let us all sing together
of peace, peace, peace on earth…

Lyrics by Daniel Kantor
Cold are the people, winter of life,
We tremble in shadows this cold endless night,
Frozen in the snow lie roses sleeping,
Flowers that will echo the sunrise,
Fire of hope is our only warmth,
Weary, it’s flame will be dying soon.

Voice in the distance, call in the night,
On wind you enfold us
You speak of the light,
Gentle on the ear you whisper softly,
Rumours of a dawn so embracing,
Breathless love awaits darkened souls,
Soon will we know of the morning.

Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright,
Round yon Virgin Mother and child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

Spirit among us, shine like the star,
Your light that guides shepherds and kings from afar,
Shimmer in the sky so empty, lonely,
Rising in the warmth of your Son’s love,
Star unknowing of night and day,
Spirit we wait for your loving Son.

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The Silence Between Words

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Words, of course, but
Also the silence
Between them.

Like the silence
Between
The beloved and you.
Silence full
Of the unspoken
As a seed is full
Of all
It will become.

No poem made only
Of silence.
No poem 
Made only of words.
~Gregory Orr from “Words, of course, but” from How Beautiful the Beloved

Some mornings all I do
is write down words—cistern,
tribal, cached—copying them
from sprawled pages of books
across my desk, words that call out—
glimmerings, cursive, saffron,
heartwood—holding me in place
as if to say listen, you may need me
someday, I might offer you another way
toward beauty, or even beyond.
~Andrea Potos “Daily Practices” from The Presence of One Word

I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable.
I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
~Mary Oliver from “Everything” from New and Selected Poems: Volume Two

This morning

poem hopes 

that even though
its lines are broken 

its reader 

will be drawn forward to the part where blueberries
firm against fingers 

say roundness sweetness unspeakable softness
     in the morning
light.
~L.L. Barkat, “This Morning” from The Golden Dress

In the ghostly dawn
I write new words for your ears—
Even now you sleep.
~Amy Lowell “V” from Twenty-Four Hokku

The blueberry fields
are all afire,
each leaf an October mosaic.

As chlorophyll wanes,
the colors appear by magic,
like words selected for a poem
which begins as an empty slate.

Each carefully chosen.

Each surrounded by silence
becoming more holy
when it’s no longer empty.

So much of the beauty of poetry is the silence, a pause between the words.

Like life, there is nothing empty or meaningless about pausing.

Like poet Mary Oliver:

I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable.

I am so awed at your faithful reading and generous sharing of what I offer here.

Even when my lines are broken, or I say again what another has already said much better, yet bears repeating — I too try to write with quiet hands, and see through quiet eyes, out of reverence and awe for what unseeable gifts God has given us.

Thank you for being here with me.

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Making These Words More Than Words

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This is another day, O Lord.
I know not what it will bring forth,
but make me ready, Lord,
for whatever it may be.
If I am to stand up,
help me to stand bravely.
If I am to sit still,
help me to sit quietly.
If I am to lie low,
help me to do it patiently.
And if I am to do nothing,
let me do it gallantly.
Make these words more than words,
and give me the Spirit of Jesus.
Amen.
~Book of Common Prayer

The world is overwhelmed with words coming from radio, TV, podcasts, books, magazines, social media or simply our own thoughts.

I feel barraged with what to think, how to think, who to believe, who not to believe, and why to risk thinking and believing at all.

I’m left desperate for a need for silence, just to quiet myself.
All I need is to know what I am to do with this new day,
how to best live this moment.

So I come to the Word, the only Word to think and believe.
It explains.
It responds.
It restores.
It refreshes.
It consoles.
It understands.
It embodies the Spirit I need far more than I need silence.

The words I seek to hear are far more than Words.
They are God Himself.

Amen
and again
Amen.

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Peace Rising in the Dark

barnstormingblog3 Comments

In winter, the earth remembers its hidden life;
a silence deepens that is not emptiness but preparation.
~Rowan Williams

When, in the middle of the night,
you wake with the certainty you’ve
done it all wrong, when you wake
and see clearly all the places you’ve failed,
in that moment, when dreams will not return,
this is the chance for your most gentle voice—
the one you reserve for those you love most—
to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart,
this is not yet the end of the story.
Sleep will not come, but somehow,
in that wide-awake moment there is peace—
the kind that does not need
everything to be right before it arrives.
The kind that comes from not fighting
what is real. The peace that rises
in the dark on its sure dark wings
and flies true with no moon, no stars.
~Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer “With Astonishing Tenderness” from The Unfolding

Peaceful sleep has been elusive over the last 10 nights.

I realize a significant number of people are resting more easily. They celebrate an overwhelming number of rapid changes instituted by a new government administration over a few days.

I’m not among them.

Sweetheart, this is not yet the end of the story.
It never is.

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Tell About It

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Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
― Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields…
Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~Mary Oliver from “Why I Wake Early”

(to remind myself)

i  

Make a place to sit down.  
Sit down. Be quiet.  
You must depend upon  
affection, reading, knowledge,  
skill—more of each  
than you have—inspiration,  
work, growing older, patience,  
for patience joins time  
to eternity.

ii  

Breathe with unconditional breath  
the unconditioned air.  
Stay away from anything  
that obscures the place it is in.  
There are no unsacred places;  
there are only sacred places  
and desecrated places.  

iii  

Accept what comes from silence.  
Make the best you can of it.  
Of the little words that come  
out of the silence, like prayers  
prayed back to the one who prays,  
make a poem that does not disturb  
the silence from which it came.
~Wendell Berry from “How to Be a Poet”

Here I am, telling you what I pluck out of silence every morning,
tossing my prayer to the world to share
what is astonishing to me
so as not to forget each moment.

Here you are, listening to this silence every morning,
reacting with kindness, receiving my heart –
this is even more astonishing to me
and sacred.

Thank you for being here to see what I find.
Thank you for sharing with others in your life.
Thank you for letting me know it makes a difference.
Thank you for making the best of my little words and pictures.

Welcome back, each and every day.
Happy you are here.

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And Something Happened…

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There was only the dark infinity in which nothing was.
And something happened.
At the distance of a star something happened,
and everything began.
The Word did not come into being, but it was.
It did not break upon the silence,
but it was older than the silence
and the silence was made of it.
~N. Scott Momaday in House Made of Dawn

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Nate Gibson

Something happened.

Something happened, lighting the darkness and overcoming nothingness.

Something happened and the story of the Beginning
is breathed within us.

Something happened when God spoke out of the silence.

His Word was in the Beginning,
and always has been,
and always will be.

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It’s Like a Sanctuary

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A gang of crows was chasing off
a hawk. The little stream was laughing
and shushing itself. The hawk’s reflection
briefly blurred a pool of water
and then the pool went back to waiting
for nothing or the next reflection.
The maple trees were yellow and red,
but redder farther up the stream.
I wanted especially to share
the cloud of redder leaves upstream
with the little girl I had with me,
but she was sleeping. Walking home,
I thought the willow trees around
the pond were standing up like brooms
to sweep the sky. That was the voice
in my head describing the willow trees
as brooms, a thought to stop the world
for a moment’s moment. She might have thought
the willows looked like lashes winking
around a deep-green eye,
but as I say, she was asleep
for this excursion in the world.
And she hasn’t told me yet about
the voice inside her head. For the moment
that voice is learning how to listen
to its own mysterious silence. I expect
it’s like a sanctuary in there
with a candle glowing at the back of the room
and violets dotting the grass outside.
~Maurice Manning “Violets in the Fall” from Snakedoctor

My internal voice remains a mystery.

Although I know the silent words I perceive are my own thoughts, there are times when I wonder it that voice is coming from a place deeper than my own brain’s meanderings. Mostly it feels like running commentary about what is happening around me.

I can be surprised though.

A word I seldom use will pop up in my thoughts, with wonder or puzzlement – where did that come from and why now? Perhaps my voice is not just mine alone…

I do aim for an expectant inner stillness. without being asleep to the world. Quieting a busy brain isn’t easy. We need to retreat often to an internal sanctuary of calm, with gentleness and self-kindness, and just enough illumination to light the way to a bit of insight and a wisp of wisdom.

I’ll keep the candle glowing in the back.

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An Enormous Love

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Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty
Before your God.
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you
With an enormous love,
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.

Let your God—
Love you.
~Edwina Gately “Let Your God Love You”

Now I am still
And plain:
No more words….

And deep in the darkness is God.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams

I know this happiness
is provisional:

the looming presences –
great suffering, great fear –

withdraw only
into peripheral vision:

but ineluctable this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky:

this need to dance,
this need to kneel:

this mystery:
~Denise Levertov “Of Being” from The Stream and the Sapphire

On a Sabbath day, I try to be still and silent
but fail miserably in my attempts to rest.
So much to do, so much to fix, so much to say.

I have forgotten the original reason for the seventh day.

God simply wanted to look down at what He made,
declare it good
and love it.

The least I can do is stop what I’m doing, look up, hold still and listen…

1 O love of God, how strong and true,
eternal and yet ever new,
uncomprehended and unbought,
beyond all knowledge and all thought!
O love of God, how deep and great,
far deeper than man’s deepest hate;
self-fed, self-kindled like the light,
changeless, eternal, infinite.

2 O heav’nly love, how precious still,
in days of weariness and ill,
in nights of pain and helplessness,
to heal, to comfort, and to bless!
O wide-embracing, wondrous love!
We read you in the sky above,
we read you in the earth below,
in seas that swell and streams that flow.

3 We read you best in him who came
bearing for us the cross of shame;
sent by the Father from on high,
our life to live, our death to die.
We read your pow’r to bless and save,
e’en in the darkness of the grave;
still more in resurrection light
we read the fullness of your might.

4 O love of God, our shield and stay
through all the perils of our way!
Eternal love, in you we rest,
forever safe, forever blest.
We will exalt you, God and King,
and we will ever praise your name;
we will extol you ev’ry day,
and evermore your praise proclaim.
~Horatius Bonar

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Who is the Great I Am: A Saturday of Stillness

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God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he’s made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.
~Christian Wiman “Every Riven Thing”

The Holy Saturday of our life must be the preparation for Easter,
the persistent hope for the final glory of God. 
The virtue of our daily life is the hope which does what is possible
and expects God to do the impossible. 
To express it somewhat paradoxically, but nevertheless seriously: 
the worst has actually already happened; 
we exist,
and even death cannot deprive us of this. 
Now is the Holy Saturday of our ordinary life, 
but there will also be Easter, our true and eternal life. 
~Karl Rahner “Holy Saturday” in The Great Church Year

This is the day in between when nothing makes sense: 
 we are lost, hopeless, grieving, riven beyond recognition.

We are brought to our senses by this one Death, this premeditated killing, this senseless act that darkened the skies, shook the earth and tore down the curtained barriers to the Living Eternal God.

The worst has already happened, despite how horrific are the constant tragic events filling our headlines.

Today, this Holy Saturday we are in between, stumbling in the darkness but aware of hints of light, of buds, of life, of promised fruit to come.

The best has already happened; it happened even as we remained oblivious to its impossibility.

We move through this Saturday, doing what is possible even when it feels senseless, even as we feel split apart, torn and sundered.

Tomorrow it will all make sense: our hope brings us face to face with our God who is and was and does the impossible.

So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen, and placed it in a tomb cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid.
Mark 15:46-47

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
Psalm 27:14

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice-and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.

All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.
~Joseph Plunkett “I See His Blood Upon the Rose”

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The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: Waiting in Silence

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Now I am still
And plain:
No more words….

And deep in the darkness is God.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from The Inner Sky: Poems, Notes, Dreams

Some days, words simply don’t come.
I am stilled and plain – silent in darkness.
God is in the depth of these empty hours.
He is there – waiting alongside me.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

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