Good evening.

Tonight I am offering nothing
more
than a little

Wendell Berry
wisdom.
As with most
of his wisdom,
it is simple,
common,
concrete,
and even so,
elegant.

“Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.”

That is how he begins.
He, of course,
is talking about
writing a poem.
I am talking about
learning
to be still
in utter silence
with…
ourselves.

Learning to be
in silence
with ourselves.

It begins
with a place.
Making a place
where that feels inviting,
safe,
easy,
comfortable.
A place we can go
and want to go
and is accessible
to us in our routine lives.

If ‘my place’
the only one in which I can be
quiet and still,
is in a forest
or on a mountain
or in a cabin
or on a boat,
then we have successfully
condemned ourselves
to infrequent stillness.
It must be accessible,
and safe
and comfortable –
a place we want to go
and where we want to be
and that feels like ‘our place’.

“Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air. “

Breathing,
as we emphasize here,
is the great regulator.
Fast paced breathing
will increase the blood flow
and raise the heart rate
and get us ready for action,
while slow paced breathing
deep
and graceful
and steady
lowers the blood pressure
and calms the mind
and prepares us for rest.

It is not magic;
it is actually science -
biology and physiology in fact.
Breathing is one of the key ways
the body has
of regulating itself.
Breath is a control knob
on the biological eco-system
we call the body.

So if we are looking for stillness,
and finding a place
within ourselves
in which we can be quiet,
we need to turn down
our breathing
into a low gear.

“There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.”

By setting it apart,
we discover its sacredness.
I do not know why it is that way,
I just know that it is.
It is difficult for us to
experience the sacred
in places that we “use”
with regularity.
In fact,
we desecrate,
or de-sacredize
a place
by making it common,
and by our continuous ‘use’ of it
for whatever purpose
we render it.
A trail through the woods,
well-used and trampled over,
becomes worn out,
eroded,
littered,
and eventually,
simply a means of getting somewhere
instead of ‘the forest’.

So even though
all places
and all spaces
are sacred,
because God in imbued
in all things,
we still need set-aside places
in which we can perceive God’s presence.
It is not a place
that loses its sacredness,
it is that we lose
the ability
to see the sacred
in all things.

Finally,
“Accept what comes from silence.”

Often we reject silence
as soon as we hear something
we do not want to hear,
or feel something we do no want to feel.
A restlessness of spirit
rises up within the silence
and growls,
even roars,
so that silence
becomes immediately impossible.

We need to open the door
and windows
to let all of what comes
come in.
We can evaluate it later.
We can argue with it later.
We can believe it or reject it later.

But in the moment of silence,
we accept it hospitably
as we would a visitor at our door.

The great secret to silence,
if it is even a secret,
is the acceptance,
the total, momentary acceptance,
of all that comes from silence.

So that is it.
Simple,
concrete,
humble wisdom
that can deepen our spirit,
heal our minds,
and save our lives.

Not bad
for one old poem.
And now,
let us practice a moment of silence
as we prepare
to light candles
in thanksgiving for the abundance
of our lives.

©R Cameron Miller