Hush

I need a break. My body is tired and I'm coming down with something. I've been working hard and the pain in my body was urging me to slow down, to rest, to grasp the silence that I hold so dear up to my ears like an empty shell, and listen to the waves of my life as they find their rhythm once again.

Hushing your thoughts is like hushing a baby. It doesn't always work, but we have to keep trying. My mind is a wild place that wants to create. Trying to clear the deck of useless information is a big project. Just because you "assume the position" doesn't mean that your mind will. It takes practice and I usually keep trying long enough to at least leave an identation in the couch.

Thomas Merton once observed that many of us are in love with our own noise, so we constantly defile silence, fearing that it might accuse us of our own emptiness. If there is emptiness at the center of our lives, it would be the place that paradise used to live before chaos took over. Before the suffering of our souls and the suffering of the world reached in and covered the silence with deafening noise. Or are we afraid that if we are quiet for too long that we will start to cry and never stop? Are we afraid that we will have to come face to face with own darkness? Why not come face to face with our own light. It shines in us. We can find that place of silence and peace. Allow it to happen. Quiet that toddler that you have racing around in your head. Hush the noise. You can do it.