SACRED SILENCE

I know the sacred silence of my body: the secret movement of the hidden cells, the quiet working to renew the tissues' balance, the ceaseless ebb and flow within each artery and vein. I know the silence of the healing wound, the steady, quick replenishment of lost blood, the strange recuperative power of rest and recreation. I know the reproductive power of silent cells that constitute my body. Mysteries of cell division lie within the boundaries of this very body's skin. How silent the creative working of these cells before I left the womb. How silent is that working still.

I know the magic silence of a human mind. How marvelous its power of apprehending patterns of number from one unto sextillions; patterns of color amidst the blues and reds and golds; patterns of form in space from elementary particles to atoms, to metagalaxies and beyond. What hidden depths of silence dwell also within the memory of each of us. Persistently fragments of meaning are fitted into ever larger frames of understanding through miracles of memory. And no less magic is memory's creative foil, imagination, whose dreamtime and daylight task is new creation moving in silence. Imagination is the active silent mother of the arts, the father of discovery in the sciences. She I would celebrate as I reflect upon the mystery of the mind.

I know the depths of silence in the heart: the never uttered depths of love between two lovers or a husband and a wife, the speechless intimacy of a caress, the interweaving spell of friendship rooted in the act of being altogether for another and the faith restoring fact that someone else stands utterly for you. I know the silence of the heart when grief comes, when someone precious is no more and whoever is closest to the departed one is in need of solace. Words never stretch to that occasion, yet the sympathy of silence avails. Slowly the silence of heart is transmuted into the silence of the soul: a new relationship is formed which joins the person struck with grief in quiet confidence with the enduring essence of ongoing life.

How many are the moods of silence. Unutterable joy and unfathomable pain dwell together in this temple. Life moves between the silences of gestation and departure, longing and fulfillment, despair and exaltation, loneliness and experienced communion. Eternal contrasts live within the moods of silence. Out of her womb emerge the permanently great creations of the human soul. Into her presence we reverently leave the unanswerable questions which confront us, faithfully believing that we can know whatever may be needed in due time.

There is a time for silence and a time for speech, a time for sleeping and a time for reawakening, a time for relaxation as well as a time for action. In the time which is given to silence, we can allow the universe to flow into our own existence. We can beoome immediately aware of the eons of life which participate in our own. An act of reappraisal very likely may occur. Through the widening of our levels of appreciative awareness, we slough off habits which are hindering our growth. Insight into the true meaning of one's life and the purposes of one's life break into consciousness. In sacred silence reevaluation proceeds with power. No longer are the urgent interests of the moment paramount. Pursuit of the larger goods, the truly self-fulfilling goods, is eagerly undertaken. Fresh relation to reality takes place. Inner clefts are healed. Silence: what a force of creative integration, whose sacred fruit is never less than all pervasive reverence for Life.

There is a time for silence and a time for speech.