Tag: silence

Sunday Morning

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You are the doubter and the doubt,
worshipping a book you can’t read.

The awful quiet in your heart
is not the peace you were promised,

not the trembling hush before a revelation,
not a prelude to an earthquake,

not God’s silence, but his breathlessness.

~ Traci Brimhall, from “Gnostic Fugue,”  from Our Lady of the Ruins

 

Photo: Noell Oszvald.  Post inspired by quote from Mindfulbalance: “In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.” ~ Rabbi Joshua Herschel, Between God and Man.

 

Saturday Morning

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Let my words become like a skilled
Potter’s hands,
Quieting,
Smoothing your life
With their knowledge,
Reaching into your tender core
And spreading you out
Like the morning …

~ Hafiz (1315-1390), from “Your Shape of Laughter” in “The Subject Tonight Is Love. 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz”

Photo: katrinauld. Poem via finita–la–commedia

Saturday Morning

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Oh, the coming-out-of-nowhere moment
when, nothing
happens
no what-have-I-to-do-today-list

maybe half a moment
the rush of traffic stops.
The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be
slows to silence,
the white cotton curtains hanging still.

~ Marie Howe, “The Moment” (via Poets.org)

Photo: Eylül Aslan

32° F (Feels like 26° F)

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Silence…

thrilling cold —

so much beauty.

Like breathing pure oxygen.

~ Susan Sontag, from “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980“

Notes:

  • Inspired by: “The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is – and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue.” ~ Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale (via beyondthefieldsweknow.org)
  • Photo Source: Your Eyes Blaze Out

Sunday Morning

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Carrying a day
is like carrying a mountain,
Brooding over your own horizon
those endless small words
The silence at the end of sentences.
Come to the bank
Breathe the snow
Put your day down

– Terrance Keenan, excerpted and edited from “Lullaby of Crossing the River” in St. Nadie in Winter

Notes: Poem via The Vale of Soul Making. Photo by Patty Maher (The Quiet Storm).