Tag Archives: Silence

1026. The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. ~John Burroughs

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Winter is the slow-down
Winter is the search for self
Winter gives the silence you need to listen
Winter goes gray so you can see your own colors…
~Terri Guillemets

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What is your color? Do you know? If you do, do you like what you see? If you don’t, maybe you should give some thought as to why. For what colors us, colors our world and the way in which we respond to those around us. Perhaps like me, the seasons determine your colors, which I’m given to believe is a good thing. I rather like the idea of being a whole spectrum of colors as opposed to being a monotonous stream of only one or two. Whether such things matter is not the true import of my discourse here however. As Guillemets suggests we truly do need time to slow down, time to rest, time to listen, time to reflect on things for soon we will forge full speed ahead into another year of life that we’ll never get back, that when it’s over will never afford us more chances to change, that when it’s spent will never allow us more time to become all that we are meant to be, that when it ends will never give us other opportunities to forgive, to love, to find and bring peace. So when I find myself grumbling about the grays of sunless, winter days, I tell myself that perhaps they happen because the color gray is a good back drop for discerning the true colors of life, the unmasked face of the world, and our authentic reflection upon its stage.

A year of beauty. A year of plenty.
A year of planting. A year of harvest.
A year of healing. A year of vision.
A year of passion. A year of rebirth.
A year of peace.

This year may we renew the earth.
Let it begin with each step we take.
And let it begin with each change we make.
And let it begin with each chain we break.
And let it begin every time we awake.
~Edited poem by Starhwak

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. ~Psalm 90:12   ✝

**Image via Pinterest

1013. I saw old autumn in the misty morn stand shadowless like silence, listening 
to silence. ~Thomas Hood

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After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things.  It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir(way of knowing).
~Wallace Stevens

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O splendid, lusty autumn, you who come with a subtle change in the light, with skies a deeper blue, with cooler days and lengthening chilly nights, it is, I’m sad to say, time for you to go. This year’s first frosts have come and gone, migratory birds have vanished over distant horizons, and crops have been harvested from garden and field alike. And all the while your while beauty and bounty “shined unconfined” as your days spread a “common feast for all that live.” Grateful are we to God and thee, o “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” that rains fell in good measure and gusty winds laid abundant, leafy blankets over the ground in protective readiness against winter’s icy blasts.

silence
seeks the center
of every tree and rock,
that thing we hold closest
-
the end of mere songs
~Michael McClintock

O Lord, I have truly enjoyed listening to nature’s solemn, autumnal hymns once again. And I’ve watched in wonder as leaf upon leaf floated down disrobing the earth. Now I find delight in the millions of shining stars I can see through the bare tree branches, and I know, according to Your promises, that when autumn’s allotted sands of time run out of this year’s hourglass that it’s not an ending. So I’ll go to bed tonight assured that with the arrival of the winter solstice near midnight this evening that the slamming shut of fall’s back door is in reality just a new beginning, a fresh start that will usher in another season, a season of restful silences. Thus at the morrow’s first light, I will rise and begin in earnest to prepare my heart to welcome Your son, Emmanuel, and to rest–to rest, to observe, to listen, and to continue worshiping You.

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. ~Genesis 8:22  ✝

**Image via Pinterest

975. Rain, I can hear you making small holes in the silence. The many notes of falling rain are all in tune. ~Unknown

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Grey clouds flowing overhead
Dead silence across the rolling hills
Misting haze hovering over the grass
Water dripping from leaf to leaf
Speckling pavement like splattered ink
Soft knocking at your door
Feel it, taste it on your lips
Rain…
~Sarah Mariah

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The only thing I love more
than a day of rain
is a night of rain,
a warm, colourless rain
that paints itself upon me
in long melodic lines.
~Edited excerpt from a poem by
Stephanie Rachel Seely

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Walked for half an hour in the garden. A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn. The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered in the distance – a melancholy nature.  The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief. A brood of chattering birds were chasing each other through the shrubberies, and playing games among the branches, like a knot of hiding schoolboys. Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail. ~Edited excerpt from Henri Frédéric Amiel

May he(Solomon) be like rain falling on a mown field, like showers watering the earth. Praise be to His(God) glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and amen. ~Psalm 72:6, 19  ✝

**All images via Pinterest

951. All was silent as before – all silent save the dripping rain. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Mid-November has come shrouded in its predictable gloom
Which has set the sky to weeping from its heavy clouds of grey.
Somber as that may be autumn’s flowery remains yet bloom
Albeit droop amidst the decomposing ghosts of yesterday.

The garden, it is still and as silent as a tomb except for
The rain that varies from mists to showers to a downpour,
And there are no birds, no butterflies, no bees, no cats astray
Venturing forth from their dry haunts all the livelong day.

And I, I sit in front of the window and watch in a melancholy
Kind of funk, the cause of which I know not except to say
That like a chameleon perhaps I’ve taken on the colors of the day
But not because the rain, the silence, and the peacefulness are folly.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ~Philippians 4:6-7   ✝

939. Silence is the universal refuge… ~Henry David Thoreau

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When I am alone I can become invisible.
I can sit on top of a dune as motionless as an
uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned.
I can hear the almost unhearable sound
of the roses singing.
~Mary Oliver

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You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free. Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
~John O’Donohue

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. ~Matthew 11:15 (ESV)  ✝

935. Silence is a sounding thing, to one who listens hungrily. ~Gwendolyn Bennett

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The primary virtue is: hold your tongue;
who knows how to keep quiet is close to God.
~Cato, translated from Latin

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Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don’t
try to make them elaborate,
this isn’t a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
~Mary Oliver

…a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak… ~Ecclesiastes 3:7  ✝

**Image of blue iris via Pinterest

http://https://youtu.be/ZiKz3ki7uG8

925. The earth has music for those who listen. ~William Shakespeare

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Inside the silence between
your 
heartbeats hides a summons.
Do you hear it?
Listen.
Quiet the voices and noise around you.
Honor the Holy One calling you!
~Author Unknown

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I perceive the universe as a cosmic temple and planet earth as a sanctuary in that temple. Although not given the power of speech as such therein, rain and other weather-related phenomena exhibit distinctive voices in and under the heavens. And as these things fall from earth’s chaotic atmosphere, they often blend their unique voices with other holy sounds in the natural world. In that sacred chorus is a call for humanity to seek the Maker of the temple because God not only hardwired man with a desire to connect with other human beings but also with a  longing to seek and connect with Him. Thus to that end man was given eyes to witness the sacraments of heaven and earth, ears to hear the chants of their hallowed voices, intellect to question and understand to some extent what is seen and heard, and a heart that in due time turns from irreverence to deep longing.  Tecumseh, a leader of the Shawnee, said, “Nature is so powerful, so strong.  Capturing the essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the rain in its weather.  It takes you to a place within yourself.” And so after the 11 inches of magical, mystical rain that we’ve had in the last week, I’m a’listenin’ and doin’ little jigs all over the place.

…let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance— ~Proverbs 1:5  ✝

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896. Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. ~Victor Hugo

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Music by itself carries us beyond
words and thoughts into the realm of feeling.
~Jane E. Vennard

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It has been officially autumn for a couple of weeks now, but the temperature and unchanging leaves tell a different story. Theirs is a tale of summer, a summer not yet wanting to relinquish its throne. While begrudging that fact as I sat in a church meeting yesterday, a man quietly entered the room, sat down at a piano behind me, started playing a familiar tune, and as if by magic changed everything for the better. For almost immediately after he began playing, autumn’s glory flowed down his arms and oozed from his fingertips onto the piano’s keys. As he played on, the tinkling sounds of the musical notes emulated more and more the spectacle of autumn’s falling leaves. Enthralled I turned so I could watch him play and noticed he was not reading sheet music. Instead he was playing solely from memory and out of his heart. Thus as Vennard suggests, music  does remove the limitations of words and speaks to us of things bigger and grander than the mere scope of language can, so much so that it is indeed able to carry us into and from the “realm of feeling.” Not only that but when we quiet our bodies and minds and listen carefully, we are also able to discern, in the silence of music’s pauses, the holy footfalls of Yahweh’s abiding Presence in Creation.

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song music. ~Psalm 98:4  ✝

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http://https://youtu.be/TZ0cPnOilHs

865. Silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation. ~Rumi

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May the stars carry your sadness away,
May the flowers fill your heart with beauty,
May hope forever wipe away your tears,
And, above all else, may silence make you strong.
~Chief Dan George

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When Christ said that man does not live by bread alone, he spoke of hunger. This hunger was not the hunger of the body. It was not the hunger for bread. He spoke of the hunger that begins deep down in the very depths of our being in silence. He spoke of a need as vital as breath. He spoke of our hunger for love. Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world…But with love, we are creative. With it, we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others. ~Chief Dan George

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But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. ~Psalm 13:5   ✝

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852. Silence is exhilarating at first – as noise is – but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep. ~Edward Hoagland

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God’s poet is silence!  His song is unspoken
And yet so profound, and so loud, and so far,
That it thrills you and fills you in measures unbroken—
The unceasing song of the first morning star….
~Joaquin Miller

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There is a silence
into which the world cannot intrude.
There is an ancient peace you carry
in your heart and have not lost.
There is a sense of holiness in you
the thought of sin has never touched.
All this today you will remember.
~From a COURSE IN MIRACLES
by Marianne Williamson

He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters. ~Psalm 23:2  ✝

**Image of the water lily found on Pinterest