If I were a physician and I were allowed to prescribe one remedy for all the ills of the
world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the word of God were proclaimed in the
modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence!
The mind does nothing but talk, ask
questions, search for meaning; the
heart does not talk, does not ask
questions, does not search for meaning.
Silently, it moves toward God and
surrenders. The heart is God's servant.
One day, as if I had lived alone for many years in the deep desert, I was taken by a
stunning stillness, and without resistance I disappeared into Silence... It was my soul's
homecoming, my heart's overflowing love, and my mind's eternal peace.
In Silence, I felt my core identity, my essential nature, as a unity-in-love with all
creation. I experienced freedom, clarity, and joy as my true Self... This Self, this
Silence belongs to all of us—it is who we are, it is what we are. If we are to experience
and embody authentic peace and love, if we are going to bring true healing to our
wildly violent and endangered world, we are going to have to learn to live within this
essence which joins us together as brothers and sisters.
~ from THE HEALING POWER OF SILENCE by Robert Rabbin
To deliver oneself up, to hand
oneself over, entrust oneself
completely to the silence of a
wide landscape of woods and
hills, or sea, or desert; to sit still
while the sun comes up over that
land and fills its silences with
light. To pray and work in the
morning and to labor and rest in
the afternoon, and to sit still
again in meditation in the
evening when night falls upon
that land and when the silence
fills itself with darkness and with
stars. This is a true and special
vocation. There are few who are
willing to belong completely to
such silence, to let it soak into
their bones, to breathe nothing
but silence, to feed on silence,
and to turn the very substance of
their life into a living and
vigilant silence.
How much I long for the night to come again—
I am restless all afternoon...
How much I long for the huge stars to appear all
over the heavens,
And the black spaces between those stars...
Because I do not know words – tender, true,
and worthy enough to tread upon the pristine
sweep of your soul,
I give up on words
and offer you the integrity of silence,
the undefiled page,
and the wordless wonder of your own beloved self.
Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like "struggle". To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.
