Sitting in the Silence

Silence! Barely recovered from all the fun and excitement of Thanksgiving – yet I am looking forward to Christmas. For most of this fall I have been pushing through learning a new job, meeting new people, and trying to keep my center. And even though I work with wonderful people, from a desk in my home, I find that sometimes I push past my center to a place that makes me a person I don’t want to be. I guess that can happen from any desk, in any office, in any place.

All of this makes me think about the eloquence of silence. The house is quiet in the early morning. I hear the beautiful wind chimes on the deck, moved by the wind that is bringing cold air to this part of the world. The dogs are at my feet and I think about the monks, living in silence.  I scratch words out in a journal after reading the work of Thomas Merton or Carl Jung, Cathleen Norris or Virginia Woolf. It is still dark – and the gloomy weather magnifies the darkness. I like the silence of the morning. Readying for the day - wondering how I ever managed without taking time to center down, listen to myself, and listen to the world.

With all the excitement of the holidays, new possibilities at work, and starting a school it is more important than ever to stop and honor the silence. In the hurried world we live in, information bombarding us from every direction, I am thankful for finding my way to silence, just a little each day. Silence is not a luxury in my life anymore, but a necessity. So today, try to stop, even if it just for a few minutes – sit in silence and hear your self. You might be surprised!