Good morning…
She read to me the Rachel Naomi Remen quote above and down, down deep it sank. Wisdom settled like a skipping stone at the bottom of my murky sea.
“Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence.”
When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence.
Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions: Wait for hope to appear (Lamentations 3:27-28, MSG).
Hope we wait for is gradually given by God. In silence grows our gift to the world. We become a non-anxious place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of each person as they are. No need for unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. Everywhere we go, might we embody this other silence?
In us, with us, through us, God quietly feeds the world’s hunger. We are empowered to get off by ourselves, to enter silence, to bow in prayer and to wait for the gift of hope to appear.
…Sue…
P.S. I harness the capacity to hunker down in silence, night, day, and all muted hours in between. In a state of silence and solitude, I can be with James and Brooke in Nashville as he heals from his heart transplant, and I can be with the Duke doctors consulting this morning as they consider a pathway forward through Elizabeth’s journey with colon cancer, and I can be with Jerry and Anne as they wake in the hospital this morning trying to get needed answers for the recurrence of his bladder cancer, and I can be with Audrey and the DeShetlers as they head into another round of cutting edge radioactive treatment to hopefully cure her cancer at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and I can be with my parents as they adjust to a new normal in Ohio, and I can be with friends struggling with the impact of Alzheimers, and I can be with LaTonya as she bonds with women and children in Uganda, and I can be with all of the people on our church’s prayer list who are facing their own private joys and sorrows. Embodying this other silence, I get away, I bow in prayer and I compassionately wait for hope to appear for loved ones throughout the world.
And I am just one person. To whom might you bring the prayerful gift of this other silence?
