Silence

Walking in silence has two aspects.

The first silence is the silence that follows us. It is the silence of the bottomless lake in our souls, where the ghosts and phantoms of things past and things to come lurk. When we enter into that silence, the denizens of that lake surround us, twirling and swirling around our feet, until they suck us into the lake. At first, the darkness is welcoming and the waters are warm near the surface, but as we are drawn in, we feel the cold that will eventually put us to sleep; the sleep of hypothermia and death.

Usually, we can avoid the silence or even escape it, as we fill our ears with the noise of life, family, work. The noise drowns the silence and we can carry on, not feeling the emptiness.

Sometimes, though, life, family and work can become still and we have no escape from the silence. There is no avoiding it. Or, even worse, in the midst of a busy life, when we have no time to struggle, the noise becomes too weak to drown out the evergrowing silence. This is because the noise can only hide the silence. It cannot make it go away.

These are the times when we need the second silence, the silence we seek out deliberately. A man I heard speak recently calls it the prayer of surrender. He explains that the prayer of surrender creates spaces between our thoughts that we cannot enter into, but where God enters to fill the spaces and heal the gaps, so that the silence we hear is a restful one that invites us into peace.

This is the silence I wish to find.