When there is silence, one finds the anchor of the Universe within oneself
Lao Tzu
There are times when words cannot be found and we’re all familiar with that fact, though that doesn’t stop us from straining and struggling to find the right words to articulate whatever is going on in us. Yes: whatever is going on in us. The billions of things going on in us, always and everywhere. There’s a clue in this – for whatever’s going on does a great deal of its going on in us. I wonder if others, like me, get frightened sometimes, like a person drowning, paddling furiously and shouting in terror, unaware that a rescuer, swimming swiftly and silently, steadied by a life belt, will reach them only seconds from now?
All of this comes to mind, in this late evening, in hushed Edinburgh, in silence. And for a while I observe words tumbling into the silence. Explanations. Questions. Expectations. Prayers. Protestations. Until, until … because it’s late and the words have been tumble-drying around and around in the spinner all day, the silence prevails. An ocean of silence. An ocean doing its ebbing and flowing ocean-thing within. And oddly there’s no panic here, but a kind of undergirding depth instead. This is immeasurable comfort to me, for if – after all my words of ‘life and death’ subside – I can know what it is to be held, to be ‘rescued’ if you like, then it must ultimately be so for all others as well. This safe and peace-filled holding in the silence must also be for the people – alive and dead – that I have longed for, and do long for, as they have faced, or are facing, illness, suffering, cruelty, warfare, profound aloneness – crying out to the heavens for words, for answers. The words eventually give way to the undergirding and sustaining silence. A kind of – perhaps an actual – paradise, even if only for a nano-second sometimes, available to us in the here and now, wheresoever our here, and our now …
When there is silence, one finds the anchor …
Ah, dear Love, for all souls lost for words, may it be so.
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