A stillness that just about bursts

Listening to the Silence Living Life Following Jesus

There is animated conversation. Loud. Sometimes I think they may be quarreling. It's not a language I know. But it could well be that they are talking enthusiastically about a generous inheritance they've just received, or a wedding that they are preparing for, or the announcement of something important like the birth of the first great grandson. Who knows?

If I keep the doors of my senses open, I am inclined to think that all of life passes through them. But if I shut them and descend into a valley within me that sits close by my senses, then I become aware of a vastness, beyond the reach of my senses.

There it is colored with unknown colors. There it stirs with silence that is audible and penetrating. There it holds me in cushions of shifting stillness, a glorious mosaic of stories yet to be told. A stillness that just about bursts within me.

The Taste

A walnut kernel shaken against its shell makes
a delicate sound, but

the walnut taste and the sweet oil inside makes
unstruck music. Mystics

call the shell rattling talk, the other, the taste
of silence. We've been speaking

poetry and opening so-called secrets of soul growth
long enough. After

days of feasting, fast, after days of sleeping, stay
awake one night, after these

times of bitter storytelling, joking and serious
considerations, we should

give ourselves two days between layers of baklava
in the quiet seclusion where

soul sweetens and thrives more than with language,

I hear nothing in my ear
but your voice. Heart has

plundered mind of all its
eloquence. Love writes

a transparent calligraphy, so
on the empty page my soul can

read and recollect.

Rumi in The Soul of Rumi by Coleman Barks