7 & 7: Silence vs. Listening

REFLECTION:

Silence is living too. Silence can compete with other forms of living that conspire to crowd it out. Silence makes good friends like peace, and truth, and affection, and careful listening to others. Silence advances strength in spirit and quiet imaginings when not accompanied by loneliness. Growth can occur in silence beyond detection. Silence awakens the senses, allowing you to notice things you never imagined shared your space. These things have shape and size, color and texture, sound and smell, movement and direction. Their little dramas have a story to tell, a relevance to you. Silence allows you to enter their world. Silence is not the same as nothing-ness. Quite the opposite. The reader is silent, yet her mind is full of images and places, thoughts and dreams. In the silence she is transported to other worlds of living that may possess the answers she has sought. That is the point.

MUSES:

Taking time to live is taking time to appreciate simple silence as better than any kind of talk, or watching a flower, or watching a guy wash the windows on a skyscraper and wondering what he is thinking.
Gersi Douchan

The fair request ought to be followed by the deed, in silence.
Dante

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love-for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the council of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Max Ehrmann

Acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.
Thomas Carlyle

‘Tis the good reader that makes the good book.
Ralph Waldo Emerson