The power of silence should not be underestimated. Nor should the power of words. Language shapes silence; it give silence rhythm, pitch and texture. When words become embodied in beings, they become the ornaments and reminders of silence. Silence is the ground. Language and words bring "things" into "being" out of the emptiness. What carries the Word is breath. Words are Spirit transmuted into substance... Without holy speech, the boundaries of the world shrink, and humans are left in a wasteland outside the web of great nature. Without silence, we cannot hear the voices of all beings.
One night, as I kneeled beside my bed and prayed, I gazed through my window at the starry night. I thought of how God was THROUGH, and yet BEYOND, all space. Suddenly, I had the sensation of being surrounded by a musical harmony like a great anthem, only inaudible to the human ear. Then I just seemed to evaporate until I too was THROUGH and BEYOND the stars.
I was completely filling space, and the musical harmony was completely filling me. I did not see the proverbial Light, I experienced it. I did not hear the anthem, I was it... I understood that everything was part of God, everything in the universe was one.
~ Janice in "Re-Visioning Childhood Experience" by Edward Hoffman
