As a young man just 25 years old, the reality that my father was dying gave me the strength to find silence again. I spent uncounted afternoons by his side talking and listening to pure sound, not noise. He told me to be my own man. He helped me recognize the noise so I could stop listening to it. His dying pushed it away and created a space where silence could bloom and thrive. And in that silence, perhaps for the first time since I was five, I heard the voice of my spirit. It told me what I value. It showed me my weaknesses, illuminated my strengths, and gave me the clarity to decide for myself how I ought to live.
I believe the noise of our world is killing people, stifling spirits, and limiting the potential of humanity ... I believe there is a person inside all of us that needs to be heard.
Children do not yet "know" enough to resist the force that governs and guides them from one goodness to the next. They haven't yet been fooled by their senses into practicing the impractical practice of trying to run their own lives and prove themselves in relation to others. So they show us what the scriptures teach -- that there is something we can trust. Our superficial perspective fools us all into seeking security by hanging on to certain interpersonal conditions and experiences in what is, after all, an exploding universe of divine self-revelation. This places us in opposition to the current of life and prevents us from increasingly seeing and expressing the unfolding good of God. Yet in the silence, we too can learn to go with and be carried along by the flow -- from one liberating revelation of the great eternal One to the next.
~ from COMING TO LIFE: TRAVELING THE SPIRITUAL PATH IN EVERYDAY LIFE by Polly Berends with thanks to Gay Grissom
