A Moment of Silence

"Silence, healing" ~ Heraclitus

Yesterday was an unexpected moment of silence - and unplanned - as I had aimed to blog daily all year.

Even so, perhaps one was needed on a day like yesterday.  I will honor the moment.

 

 

Water photo by Susan Larison Danz. 

Random Beauty

"Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,

And Innocence, thy sister dear?" 

~ Andrew Marvell, The Garden

It seems the older I get, the more I return to appreciating how a child sees the world.  I've written before about this notion of being "childlike" (versus "childish").  

We can wander through the world in a state of natural wonder.  We can combine this with maturity by being consciously Still. 

Tonight, I "randomly" turned to the poem The Garden by Andrew Marvell, in a very sizeable book.  It was exactly that.

Beauty awaits us.

 

 

 

Early Spring Wildflower by Susan Larison Danz.

Stillness of Spirit

 "True stillness of Spirit is with you always, whether standing in a meadow or a maelstrom." ~ Susan Larison Danz

It may seem an ideal, and it is, to speak of it this way, this concept of always finding stillness of Spirit.  What is remarkable as we begin to discover this Stillness is how it grows.  It may not always be always, but it becomes more and more accessible.

Together, we are navigating through times that feel unprecedented to most of us.  At times like these, I am so very thankful for my Spirituality.  I didn't always have it so present in my life, but I surely am thankful it is now.  

I wish I could tell you it's as simple as some formula.  There are formulas out there to help, such as mindfulness and breathing.  Or walking in a quiet meadow.

But this is not quite that.  There is no formula.  It isn't well defined.  It can feel like some kind of a Miracle, how it arrives.  It's an undeniable presence of Spirituality, every day, in my life. 

In times like these, we need an open heart and a still Spirit, as much as we can find them.  Many Spiritual wayshowers in history have told us this as well.  Open hearts and still Spirits navigate far more effectively and honestly than closed and agitated minds.  

Thank goodness for Spirituality.  I can no longer imagine my life without it.

Meadow photo by Susan Larison Danz.

Music, Interwoven

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”~ Charles Darwin

Some weeks ago my main cable TV connection went out.  The wiring into the home, I had been told last year, was not up to the standards of the latest equipment, but it had managed to work for a long while.  It actually worked fine until it was necessary to disconnect it briefly one day, and then it was never really the same again, and very soon, it gave out completely.  I decided not to reconnect it.

At first I missed it.

You see, somehow I had apparently stopped noticing the noise.  And when the noise was gone, it felt very strange.  The noise was actually generally the cable news spouting opinions about the state of the world - because "the news" isn't "the news" anymore and probably never was, but nowadays it doesn't even pretend to be "news" - it's shrill opinion, with a little "news" mixed in, no matter what the leanings of the "news station".

It turns out I didn't need it.  I learn what small amount of "actual news" I need to know in other ways.  Yes, I missed the old movies I liked to watch on TCM, but that's why we have libraries and DVDs.  And even those were tending to distract me.  So were other forms of talk, at the times I didn't need to hear it (as a radio host myself, I know helpful conversations have their place, but we need to personally respect what that place is).

I needed the Peace.  I needed the Stillness.

When family is here, we needed the Stillness, too, especially during dinner.  We used to be tempted to turn on the TV and generally watch "the news".

So what are evenings like now?

Musical.  Beautifully Musical. 

I realized one night it is shared, well beyond this home.  When I turn on the local Classical station, like I did on both Christmas and New Year's Eve (and Christmas and New Year's night, too, and all of the nights in between), it's like going to a concert.  (It's on at times during the day too, in between sometimes switching the station to Jazz.  It's on right now.)  When you are listening to a particularly good station, it has a way of surprising you - you come to realize the Music is lovingly woven together by the hosts, over time, night after night after night and day after day (the hosts are actually artists and composers themselves - that's what the weaving is).  You yourself become woven into the form.  It becomes inextricable.

There is something here that I've been missing.  I've felt I've known it before, and then somehow I lost it.  But I have found it, again. 

I'm reading more.  I'm feeling personally poetic (though I've been no stranger to poetry).   I'm even blogging right now (though I've been no stranger to writing).

It is changing me.  I feel it, already.  There is a new pattern.  There is a Divine majesty to it.  There is a kind of an unfolding.  It's like walking in Nature.  Perhaps it's just Beauty, and a kind of re-centering.

It is Still, even when not.

How is it the Music connects me even more to "the world" than "the news"?   Yet, exactly, so, it is.

The Sound of Silence

I realize it has been some time since I have written in this blog. Although I have maintained some presence online in the many venues I visit, for many weeks I have been experiencing an unexpected exercise in the sound of silence.

It started with a particularly intense case of the flu, bringing my busy life virtually to a standstill for almost two weeks (with an even longer recovery time). Then I developed a lingering case of laryngitis that only now is finally subsiding. Because I was unable to talk on the phone or engage in conversations, this had a significant impact on my professional and personal life. Yet I discovered my life was far more flexible than I realized, perfectly capable of accommodating the unexpected.

While at first I fought the illness and the imposed silence, after a time, I began to recognize the gifts they were bringing my way, seemingly uninvited. As I listened ever more closely in the silence and the stillness, I began to discern and release those things in my life distancing and distracting me from those things that really mattered. The gift of the silence was clarity, not to mention a noticeable deepening of my own spiritual practice, allowing me to rediscover vital tools I had for a time forgotten or neglected. I even discovered the serenity of a beautiful nature park in my area I had known existed for over a year, yet for some reason had never bothered to visit...a wonderful park just waiting to be explored, rendered all the more special because of the wait.

Ironically, in the midst of the silence, I made two huge steps in the direction of discovering my voice, at a time when my physical voice was virtually gone. For the first time, I conducted two small seminars at a metaphysical expo held at the Oregon Convention Center, loved every minute of both, despite practically whispering as I leaned into the microphone (and also providing the space for others to speak in significant ways, yet another reason why my voice was diminished).

Before my physical voice returned, a new book project intuitively appeared on my radar, one that simply cannot wait to be written, thus expanding my current active book projects from one to two.

And, yes, finally I return to this blog, a blog I intend to take in new directions in the coming weeks.

Those of us conscious of our spirituality often expect that the perfect life will proceed exactly as planned, and we set our intent to make it so. What we fail to realize, however, is the imperfection of what we think might be perfect. The overall map of our lives cannot be written by micro-controlling every single moment. Can we begin to perceive the divine perfection of unexpected gifts?

The sound of silence lingers with me still, never again to be forgotten in those sacred spaces of the day I intentionally set aside for the Stillness of Spirit.