If Only They Knew to Love the Silence

When you are all alone, there is a quiet in the morning that can never, ever happen when someone else is there -- no matter how much you love and appreciate their presence. 

In that quiet space, there is the divine, the whole of all things. There is infinity and closeness. There is nothing to fear when the world is quiet and dark and fresh, the day not yet dawn. There is such beauty in quiet. Breaking the silence feels like spoiling it all, and it may never come again. And you are grateful when it does. 

Learning to love the quiet can be difficult if you think that happiness resides in the voices of children and lovers and friends, in the cacophony that they deliver each day, freshly made like bread warm from the oven, the aroma preceding the taste. 

And if you think that is life ... there is so much more. Sound would not have meaning if not for quiet. If not for the lack of, the deficit, the absence of. 

I don't appreciate it enough, but this morning I awoke giving gratitude for the quiet that envelopes me, warm and comforting and impermanent. For as the day comes in, the sun rises, the birds begin their song, the rattle and hum of the world starts up, the motor of the universe churning in its infinite manner, filling all the little crevices where silence once was. 

Where does the silence go? Where does it retreat? Is it under the bed, in the closet, or the basement or attic? Where does silence go when my head begins to race with thoughts getting ahead of time and plotting out the next design of the next day, and the next? Silence is always there, as necessary as light, as air, as water. An essential element often maligned, misused or forgotten. 

If they only knew to love the silence, all other love would be easier, freer, more complete because in the silence there is that all important thing -- the absence of all. The nothing that is everything and even in most silence there is something, a distant hum of the freeway, or a neighbor four doors down starting the car or feeding the dog. Sounds so distant and feint that you can barely discern them, and yet they are filling in the space between you and me. The sound between this minute and that. The sound between having and losing, between birth and death. 

It is the absence of voice, of laughter, of rattle, of hum that creates its own world of meaning. If you learn to love the silence -- that space between everything -- you discover beauty and respite. A place to rest between breath, between cord, and tone.  So much more is said in that space between thought and word. When there is no future, no past, only present. The silence between thought and word is where the truth spills out. Give someone silence and they will draw their own conclusion and write their own story. 

If they only knew to love the silence they would never long for anything else. There would be no cause for envy or doubt or fear or sadness. These emotions would be felt for what they are: noise and clammer cluttering up the still small space that is filled with divine essence. Silence is what is present in the ancient wood where the redwood have stood for centuries, holding the stillness in their branches, allowing for peace. Perhaps that is why churches were built, to hold the silence. 

Those who never rise before dawn may never know this God time, this God presence. The lack of everything and the abundance of all. If they only knew to embrace the quietude of life, there would be no reason to argue or lie or cheat or steal or harm one another. That's why meditation is so important. Why taking time, and making time to be without noise, even the clatter of your own thoughts, allows for something greater to come in. God is in the silence. 

If only they knew to love the silence, the world would take a breath and pause and hold its collective tongue and just listen ... and be reborn.