SILENCE, the pure objective awareness of being, is our "way without words." It opens us up to our deepest spiritual awareness. Silence is fertile soil. What we receive from this rich ground depends on what we put into it... seeds that we ourselves plant in our inmost silence. People who remain unconscious about their own spiritual life seem like irresponsible farmers: they devalue the land entrusted to their care.
We cannot control our life. If we are set upon doing so, we have abdicated from peace, which must balance what is desired with what is possible. As Hokusai shows so memorably, the great wave is in waiting for any boat. It is unpredictable, as uncontrollable now as it was at the dawn of time. Will the slender boats survive or will they be overwhelmed? The risk is a human constant; it has to be accepted — and laid aside. What we can do, we do. Beyond that, we endure, our endurance framed by a sense of what matters and what does not. The worst is not that we may be overwhelmed by disaster, but to fail to live by principle. Yet we are fallible, and so the real worst, the antithesis of peace, is to refuse to recognize failure and humbly begin again.
~ from SISTER WENDY'S BOOK OF MEDITATIONS by Sr. Wendy Beckett
