The Answer

I heard the sea and asked
"What language is that?"
The sea replied,
"The language of eternal questions."

I saw the sky and asked,
"What holds the answer ?"
The sky replied,
"The language of eternal silence."


– Rabindranath Tagore
as translated in "On The Shores Of Eternity"
by Deepak Chopra

Silence first makes us pilgrims.
Secondly, silence guards the fire within.
Thirdly, silence teaches us
how to speak.

- Henri Nouwen
"The Way of the Heart"

xix

be still and know. or, why i am continually on the path of silence.

photo by gregory colbert

Listen, my heart, as only
saints have listened: until some enormous call
lifted them off the ground; yet still they knelt,
those impossible people, undistracted by the
sound,
intent on listening. Not that you could endure
the voice of God, far from it. But hear what is
whispering,
the endless message forming itself from silence.


RAINER MARIA RILKE

quiet, me.

painting by jaroslaw-kukowski

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.


Violette Leduc, French novelist
from her autobiography "Mad in Pursuit"