Sermon for Silence

I don't have much to say today, and that's a blessing for all of us.  This past week I needed more than anything else the absence of words.  All those arbitrary signs for the unspeakable.  I wanted to turn everything off: obligations, cerebral acrobatics, the indignities of aging.  No laundry.  No appointments.    No toilet paper or Ibuprofen.  No carry-out bags.  No everyday horrors like the blank multiple choice line or a woman coveting her neighbor.  Just quiet.   Just silence.

So, I offer you this:

How To Be a Poet

by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

And this:

an excerpt from "Into Great Silence", a 2005 documentary about Carthusian monks in the French Alps.  An entire film without dialogue, about men who have dedicated their lives to the absence of spoken word.  I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.





There are no unsacred places; only sacred places and desecrated places.  Let me keep this one sacred.  Give me a week or so before I must speak.

Amen.