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Persons speak to me of how intimate I can be in my writing, how personal. To me what is most personal is most universal, my story is your story, everyone's story, this being is our being. How could I hug my words close, as just mine to hold and protect? Words are a means of not merely sharing information, but sharing myself. My words invite you into a sacred sphere where we can be together, even if for a few moments or a moment, even over the illusoriness of times and spaces~there are words inside and outside time, inside and outside space. Do I feel this as a risk, to be so personal? Sometimes, slightly. But when I leave this body-house, I want one to be able to say, "He did not just give something, he gave himself, all of himself, and in that he loved us." Through words I give myself, and that means to love; I thereby find myself, the self that was never lost. A risk, if so, well-taken. For, truly, if I do not use words that image who I am and the story of my past, I remain imprisoned, apart from the other, I remain hidden in myself as separate from you, from all, from Love; and I miss being a living, breathing revelation of the Whole, the Sacred. I choose that not, but to let myself fly free in the dance and daring of words, in the spaces unscripted and uninterrupted, free of the confines of mind and body and the contrivances of society. I am known without and with words. In the Silences I am known, and I speak. I shall always speak, even when speaking is no more. Words live on, even as we live on. How, then, could I not speak myself, even if no one heard and no one listened and no one cared? Even if love finds no home, Love is its own home, and Love must love. So, I must speak, I cannot not give these words, so myself.
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She writes, inquiring if it is good to call now or a little later. "Yes." I am a little nervous, calm myself. The sound of the phone ringing, rare, for I almost always keep the phone off, honoring the boundaries of my life in solitude and silence.
We begin. Words begin too. Silences arise between words. This like a dance, with my not wanting to step on her feet. Sharing words, as a word she speaks highly of a number of times, and how important it is to her~"reciprocity~means a cadence, stumbling or smooth, and both belong.
When we word, we are saying, "I would rather not dance alone." We all are like beings with unseen hands reaching out for someone else's hands, to share, to discover ourselves in the mirror of the other, the love of the other.
And we never word alone, and not all wording is equal when seen in the light of some ideal. Yet, in the wording, one with the silences too, the ideal sinks into oblivion. It never existed really, only as an idea imposed on the silences and words.
An image she uses, one I used the day prior in a writing~bridge. A bridge is being built. Yet, we~she and I, you or anyone~cannot know what this bridge is and will be, is it being formed moment-to-moment, only that it is a bridge. We can speak forth ourselves or turn away and hide in a false solitude.
If we build together, we cannot behave as a bystander. We must become intimate with the words and the other, and our own selves each. I cannot bypass intimacy with myself in seeking intimacy with the other.
We may find ourselves, also, hurt at times, for we find we cannot discover a point of connection with the other for this co-creation to occur. We we are not moving from the same place, our words not from and to the same place.
Hiding is okay too, retreating from the closeness the words are leading us into. Sometimes, one may rightly need to hide before entering this wording, or have periodic retreats. See, wording, the more pure it is, the more subtle, the more one can sense this as a risk and, yet, at the same time, an inviting risk, or no risk at all. We learn to live with this paradox. Too, one may realize the need to be cautious~some words need not be spoken, some only to one who can receive in all its sacredness and gracefulness. The holier the words, the more bearing the perfume of Quiet, the more cautious one needs to be in speaking them.
Every word you speak together is a revelation, its power relying on where it comes from, whether with your lover, friend, or the cashier at the store. Not all words come from the same place. Some arise from the noise, little power, even if much informative. Sometimes, the word is brief, arising out of the fecund One, reverberating with the music of hidden worlds and unseen presences. Usually, your words arise from where you live, sometimes Grace brings out a sign deeper from before where you presently live. Some talk on the shore, some speak in the depths together. Some talk to you and you to them, some word with you, and you are fortunate if with someone words arise from the wordless and all you say is the decor of Silence in which you both live together. If two can share together words from the depths, this enriches their shared wording from the surfaces.
Earlier in life, until recently, I was so focused on silence I could not see how Silence is more than silence, and how one can be in Silence with another as truly and thoroughly as alone, and each speak as two-and-one the Silence and from the Silence. That is, words do not necessarily mean a cessation of Silence, but speaking and listening can be revelations within and from Silence. Possibly, I had to spend many years welcoming this alone before I could know this with another, with others. I do still sense that this will not happen or rarely, if one does not practice being in silence and with Silence alone. And,if it occurs, that one will likely go on without welcoming it, without knowing how to appreciate and remain in it with the other.
When two speak from Silence, something holy, something whole, emerges. This other is not separate from the two, but is the oneness that brings the two together through words, and, yes, the silences in which words move in and out. You can sense this deepening in the body, feel it as a new environment enveloping you both. A holy trinity of three in one happens, yet you cannot find this other, you feel it, and you may feel it is finding you both together, when you previously felt you were in proximity but not truly together, or, actually, "reunited, brought back into union."
So, you are left with this question, and it cannot be answered, "Who, or What, brings us back together?" And another, "From where?" It is best not to place a name on this Who, or What, but to realize you could not be gathered back into one if you were not already essentially one, and that that this act is not done by either of you. This re-gathering occurs through and with you. And, here, you wisely surrender to the unseen, wordless Work.
So, we see the words are not unimportant, for they are means in this, to refer again to the image of bridge, bridge-building. Yet, also, words are important, not for we are talking together or sharing information, such as about each other or eliciting information from the other. We are co-creating a re-creation out of the first creation, in continuity with it, but other than it.
So, I have learned, and am learning, the hidden wisdom of words. In a culture and world that focuses on words as means of communication of ideas, of informing and misinforming, words, to some, and at least sometimes, is a means of recreation of a new being from two who speak from within and with the Wordless. And, hence, in this, I can love another by yielding to That I-know-not, but can love and know in Love. And, yes, we could call this third, this other too intimate to be merely another, that is wordless and words through our words, by the word Love.
