silence

I often wonder about silence. There are moments when I am actually silent. Glimpses of life when my mind actually contains no thoughts. Where I exist but only in some essential way. All else disappears and I feel the hot, dark space of my self.

In teaching health right now that is something that I feel like I'm getting to do in bits and pieces. Yesterday I read Romans 12 to my kids. That was Grandpa's passage. As I read it I saw it differently. Different parts jumped out at me. I realized that because of the events of my life I could better understand verses that before I had just breezed by. I wonder how much stuck out to my kids.

Sometimes thoughts seem so real to me that I can feel them slide through my mind the way that muds squishes between my fingers. I can close my eyes and I am in a different place. All is dark except for the idea. And when there are no ideas, then all is just dark. It's a place without words. Only concepts exist. That's the part of my head where I can see math happen, where I can figure out the shapes of things. It's a very quiet part, but it's not quiet silence.

Silence is different. Silence is a companionable aloneness. I am silent with company. There are instances in my life where things happen and all I can feel in my head is silence. Places where I really have no idea how to go on. I wonder about those instances. Life inevitably does go on, but the silence is there still, waiting to be revisited, enjoyed, accompanied, and eventually sprung into the life of idea.