(chosen by Abigail for Easter Saturday 11th April)
"We don't often sit in silence, and are often afraid of it. We needn't be. I was challenged to recognise these different spaces of silence, and what I might take from each of them."
Not speaking and speaking are both
human ways of being in the world,
and there are kinds and grades of each.
There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy;
the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face;
the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul,
whence emerge new thoughts;
the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”;
the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity;
the silence of listening to another speak, catching
the drift and helping him be clear;
the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination,
loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it;
baffled silence;
the silence of peaceful accord with other persons
or communion with the cosmos.