The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep!
Eternal God, since silence seems to be
the voice of holiness, the only language
you speak directly,
then I pray to be steeped in it
until I fear it less and welcome it
as an usher to grace,
a narrator of sacred mysteries;
until silence cease the fretful conversations
of my mind with too little else than itself;
until silence calm my heart to an ease,
convene my senses to an anchored focus,
hush my tongue to a chastened hold;
until I discern in the silence
an answer to that necessary question
which, for the very life of me,
it has not yet occurred to me to ask;
until I am stretched alive and deep
to its dimensions, and catch,
at last and ready,
your assuring wink at me. Amen.
~ from MY HEART IN MY MOUTH by Ted Loder, thanks to Kimberly Wuest