Then Again, Silence

(I think I said something about taking a big break from blogging again. Well. I’ll tell you what – what I have decided is to take a major break from making any kind of declarations about blogging. This seems the best course of action. It will definitely prevent me from having to eat my words every other post.)

Greetings, friends and beloveds, from the icy cold and brilliant moonswept mountains of the smoky and assuredly wild southeast. Soon I will be making my yearly pilgrimage down to the beloved wilds of Texas. Soon it will be Winter Solstice. Soon it will be Christmas. There are birds winging their way south. There are shooting stars in the evenings. There are bare trees on the mountains. These mountains that I feel I know almost not at all. Perhaps this year we will become better acquainted. I will make a point of it.

It’s been a lonely few months, y’all. For those that may not be aware, this is because my intrepid spouse and I have been living in different states for the past four months as I pursue a degree and he pursues making a new life for us in Texas (where I will be moving after my degree is done). I could tell you that this time has been nothing but fruitful – full of the hallows of contemplative silence and spiritual rigor – but that would be a lie. I’m nothing if not a hot mess, and there have been plenty (plenty) of times that I’ve railed and railed against the silence, against this self-imposed hermitage. But yes, there have also been moments of stunning beauty in the silence. The full to bursting moon, the midnight cats moving like silk shadows over fallen leaves outside my window. Birthday hares, dreams of hawthorn bushes, a couple of good poems and a lot of good stories.

So yes. Silence has its virtues.

Just recently I finished for the second time Barbara Erakko Taylor’s lovely book Silence: Making the Journey to Inner Quiet. Its clean lines and honest beauty did not fail a second time to satisfy some hunger for depth within. So, I spend these few days before my departure making coffee and writing papers…but still with an ear towards Silence. Praying for silence. Praying to Silence. Wondering at its measure. At its weight.

Silence is a god that turns away no one. Silence is there waiting at the bottom of every breath. And, it is delightful and terrifying and wonderful and awe-ful to discover, Silence is not one thing and one thing only. There are a thousand different kinds of silence. The cedar forests in the Texas hill country as the wind moves through them in the early days of January. The brilliant snap of grass besieged by frost. Silence is a song sung by deer in the wood, stepping with their lithe footsteps through underbrush and over roots. Silence is the journey down into Solstice. The great welling up of night sky in the hollow of your chest come the darkest night, and the snap of daybreak that sings like a harp string at dawn.

I ask Silence to help me remember its greatness on those nights when it seems more mean than sweet. That awe-ful silence too – that great and terrible mouth, it has its place.

And of course, the Silence of an open road leading me west. Through woods and fields and deltas towards the hills of home. That Silence dances in my blood like a riot if it isn’t allowed to ring out like cathedral bells every few months. So I look forward to those hours of road and movement with a fierceness.

It is for all these Silences, friends and beloveds, that I am thankful.

• December 15, 2011
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