YES, JUST THERE, I can step outside and be inside the comfort of you – walking into the arms of protection, the embrace of safety. You wait there for me; there is never any doubt you are there.
Chaos can enter my mind; many alien forms can cloud my heart. Yet since I was very young I have known that in this place of yours I can be refound, renewed, re-formed. Knowing I can go there has always helped, but it has never made the pain less, just less powerful.
At first it seemed I could hear you, present faintly in the vacuous, empty whole. Later I knew I was hearing your touch, and from the place of infinite connections, I was hearing all that is said without words.
When no one speaks, the possibility that all that has ever been spoken to be heard becomes magnified. Even when what has not been said is the most profound, I still hear the summoning of all silence and come quickly to be counted among the devoted.
Shhhhh …, we cannot hear the silence when all are trying to lay claim to her treasure; when so few are concerned for her extinction. She is like the hole in the ozone, global warming, and the plight of the frogs. We do not believe the danger is real. We do not trust there is anything there to lose. Is there? Of course there is. It is the only way left to us.
~ Cheryl Sanders-Sardello
from the book: Silence:The Mystery of Wholeness by Robert Sardello, North Atlantic Books.