The Hush

February 16, 2023

A breathtaking crescent moon accompanies me as I write this morning. She reminds me that there is nothing like the moon in a dark sky to bring me to immediate silence. Like the Tibetan bell we used to ring before worship, she has the effect of instantly hushing my mind and calling me to complete attention. I am immediately under her spell and spend many minutes taking in her beauty.

Last evening, Joel and I watched “In Pursuit of Silence,” a movie that led to the book I am reading now, Notes on Silence. The movie and the book include beautiful photographs, essays and interviews with people who are in some kind of conscious relationship with silence – seeking it, studying it, reveling in it, grieving the loss of it. Now that I think of it, I don’t remember any particular images of the moon. Tall treed forests and winds through grassy fields, yes. Walking trails on monastery grounds, even one of those rooms with negative decibels level of sound, but no moon. It makes me want to ask people what brings them to immediate silence. (When I can figure out how to get you to be able to respond on this blog, please tell me!) Perhaps there are “bells” everywhere that hush people in different ways. Mine is the moon.

I was pleased when after watching the movie together, Joel told me that it helped him to understand my desire and plan for the ninety day silence. Pleased but also surprised that he didn’t fully understand it already. It was when we first started living together thirty years ago that I asked him not to speak to me in the early morning. He could give me a morning kiss, but that was it! Once the silence is broken in my mornings, the whole momentum and feeling of the day changes. While pastoring the church together, we got out of that habit. There was always something that had to be said. But in retirement, I’d like to return to that protocol in preparation for the “great silence” to come. My three months, not death!