THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE

Dear All of Us,

 It's free and it's freeing.
"The Sounds of Silence."
        It's Golden.


In silence we are freed 
to more fully hear
     the birds singing, 
     the winds whisper,
     the baby gurgling,
     the music's spaciousness,
     the engine purring,
     the poem's expanse,
     the lover's heart,
     the Spirit's lead. 



The deeper the silence
the fuller we hear.
In silence we can actually 
hear ourselves think
and another speak.

At its deeper ranges
we can hear our 
    True Self
  speaking us. 
As Rob Bell says,
   the truth of 
   who we are 
   is always 
   uttering itself
   to us in silence.
                       Robcast189, 
           You Listening to You
(really worth a listen, 
 in silence of course!)



Parker Palmer echoes with
                  Let Your Life Speak.


In the vastness of 
Deepest Silence,
we can hear past 
thinking, image 
and feeling.
In the expanse of it,
we hear in 
a wholly new 
and divine range.
In the silence 
of utter nothingness
we begin to hear
some of
          ALL
paradoxical for sure,
partial, at least for now. 



How do we tone down 
the decibels of distraction?
How do we empty out
for fullness?
How do we quiet up to 
             ALL?


The Desert Fathers 
and Mothers 
practiced meditation.
They began with 
      hesychia,
silence of the heart.
It was the repetition 
of a simple prayer phrase,
often conjoined with 
the rhythms 
of one's breathing.
The goal was to calm
heart and mind.



Eastern religions often use 
a repetitive word or two
uttered in slow silence,
paced by deep, slow breathing .
It's called a mantra in Sanskrit.


Centering Prayer 
is fairly much the same
as these two.



Yoga calms and 
empties the mind 
by concentrating on
slow rhythmic movements
and controlled breathing
while one is focused on
a word, an object,
or a sound like "Om". 



In Zen Buddhism 
meditation is called 
        zazen 
   (sitting still)
and being focused 
on the rhythm 
of one's breathing
as the mind
is stilled in silence.



The Sufi mystics
danced themselves 
into soul silence.



"In the meditation 
 of the great religions
 one makes progress 
 by going beyond thought, 
 beyond concepts,
 beyond images,
 beyond reasoning,
 thus entering
 a deeper state 
 of consciousness
 or enhanced awareness
 that is characterized 
 by profound silence." 
    William Johnson,
                 Silent Music: 
         The Science of Meditation



"Contemplation is essentially
 a listening in silence."
       Thomas Merton, 
               Contemplative Prayer


 In his cave of desperation
Elijah discovered that God
is not in the wind 
or the earthquake 
or in the fire
but in the silence 
of a gentle breeze:
"What are you doing here?"
In that sheer silence
he heard his True Self
and direction.
He got up and on.
                     1 Kings 19:1-18


"Nothing is more like God 
 than silence." 
                      Meister Eckhart



It takes conviction
to be silent in our 
noisy, bombastic,
surround sound culture.
Our consciousness 
is dulled to near death
as we are fire hosed 
with noise, gossip,
sound bites and sight popups, 
the incessant media trivia of 
"Way Too Much Ado About 
 Not Much At All."


Jesus spent a hunk 
of time and attention 
in the desert.
In that silence he heard 
the lie of temptation
and the truth of himself.
Thereafter he regularly 
went off alone 
into silent seclusion.
There he heard his truth
in oneness with Abba.
Jesus tells us to go 
to our inner room,
shut the door,
close out everything else 
as we pray.
                          Matthew 6:6


Buddha tried a lot of things
and finally sat in silence 
under the Bodhi Tree.
In that silence
he come to enlightenment. 



Albert Nolan speaks silence:
"...in today's world 
of incessant noise 
we need silence.
We need to find a way
of sometimes disconnecting
from the relentless 
flow of words, sounds,
and images that bombard us
day and night.
More important still,
we need an inner silence 
that switches off
the inner stream of
thoughts, images, 
and feelings.
Without this, 
authentic spirituality and
spiritual transformation
would not be possible."
                       Jesus Today, 
                     A Spirituality of
                     Radical Freedom 



"My core truth about Jesus
isn't rooted in  mainstream 
Christian tradition.
It's rooted in Jesus essence.
It's about the deep stillness 
of silent prayer
and a theology 
big enough to give 
that blessed stillness words."
                          Amos Smith, 
                   Healing the Divide:
      Recovering Christianity's Mystic Roots,
       Resource Publications: 2013, p223



In Deepest Silence we hear 
             God 
            (ALL) 
as we are silently enfolded 
          into that 
          Oneness.



It's free and freeing.
"The Sounds of Silence."
        It's Golden.


Thanks for this time together.
Let's head off now to 
our inner rooms and 
The Sounds of Silence.



Holding us all in the
Deep Silence 
of God's Love,

John Frank


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