Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
And only those who see take off their shoes;
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The venerated Chinese teacher Lin-chi, who died in the year 866, once interrupted the silence with a shout that was said to have nearly cracked the universe.... Breaking the silence can sometimes be a shortcut to cracking open the mysteries of the universe. But for now, I'm quite content to sit here quietly. There is only the infrequent shout of a distant ocean wave to rise above the regulated whisper of my own breathing. Soon, even these sounds fade.