Dear Friends ~ I wish to speak about joy. In this season there is plenty to be joyful about: crisp mornings, mist rising from the river, trees bright with autumn glory, the faces of children sticky with caramel apples. Yet even as the scent of cinnamon lingers in the air, and grandchildren snuggle in for a fireside story on a gently darkening evening, we know that all is not well in our world. The trouble we are in as an Earth community is severe and seemingly inexorable. This is when joy ripens beyond a heartfelt response of wonder and gratitude and deepens into an act of resistance: a fierce joy rooted in humus, in sorrow, in edges, in life Herself, in the One whom Nan Merrill called the Beloved. This is the joy that enables us to live fearlessly and robustly, to set out boldly to make a road by walking, to laugh immeasurably though we have considered all the facts. To invoke this joy we turn to the soul-criers: the storytellers, sages, and poets who bear witness to the truth that there is always more going on than we can know.
This, dear friends, is the mission and vocation of the Friends of Silence Letter: to bring you the voices who will sing joy into your soul and make it possible for you and all you love to thrive even in dark times. This is the issue in which we appeal to you to keep the Letter coming into the world. Please use the link on our website to send us a donation. May you ever live in joy. ~ Lindsay
Cultivating awareness is an essential discipline for being in the moment. As awareness deepens we become more receptive; we gradually discover the life process and move from the quantified aspects of things to their qualities. We perceive ourselves less as observers and more as integral parts of the process. Awareness leads to the sure knowledge that we are creatures among creatures and that the earth is always aware of our presence. Awareness cannot be realized without solitude and silence. Solitude enables us to become aware of the boundaries of the self, to experience aloneness as a prelude to the experience of at-one-ness. To be silent is to let go of that fear which drowns out every kind of awareness. Silence leads us into mystery. Silence means stilling self-reflexive chatter and adopting an attitude of listening. Listen to the silence of the earth -- it is deafening. Listening to the silence of earth brings us into communion with every separate being -- a blade of grass moving in the breeze, an ant walking across a leaf, the eagle hovering high overhead, water flowing slowly from a hidden spring. One becomes an ear so that all might become music.