Jim Forest, in The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life -
I recall a conversation about silence with our daughter Wendy when she was four or five years old. She said, "You know what those little sounds are that you hear when you're all alone?"
"What sounds?" I asked.
"You know, those sounds you hear when you're alone."
"What's that, Wendy?" I replied.
"That's God," she said.
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David Whyte, in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (Rev. Ed.) -
Silence does not end scepticism but makes it irrelevant. Belief or unbelief or any previously rehearsed story meets the wind in the trees, the distant horn in the busy harbour, or the watching eye and listening ear of a puzzled loved one.
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Somehow, people think 'God' speaks, and there are other voices. But what if there is only one voice? There are, therefore, many voices but all the voices of one voice?
If there is only one voice, I can drop words like 'God" and just listen. No word has to be added to the hearing. All that remains is hearing. What is heard and who is hearing are a single happening. For many persons, labeling with a word signifying transcendence can hinder this intimacy, for such connotes to them something apart from what is embodied fully here, now.
* * *
Wholehearted receptivity opens to an intimacy with the sound. Just listening wholeheartedly is enough. This means hearing what we before could not hear. Also, this means more than hearing with the ears. Listening is not limited to what is auditory.
* * *
What if I can only hear the voice when I listen from the silence? So, I listen to the leaves dancing in the wind, a train moving along the track, rain on the roof, a child's laughter, a stream flowing over rock, a friend talking, the eggs frying in the pan, so I hear what Wendy referred to as 'God'?
The weird thing is not that some people say they hear what Wendy told her dad she heard, but that so few do. Hearing what she heard is as natural and straightforward as hearing anything, or, better, just hearing. Listening from the silence is key to this disclosure arising all around us.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
