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SAR 4: Be Quiet
- What I hear right now: air conditioner, rooster crowing, children bickering and playing, people calling each other’s names for various reasons around the house, piano practice, guitar practice, recorder practice, tractor mowing outside, dishwasher on, dryer on, dog barking, doorbell ringing, kids asking questions, phone call – ring and conversation and telling kids to be quiet, dryer buzzer, microwave timer dings, constant gurgle of water flowing in the aquarium, caged bird whistling now and then, booted footsteps on wood floor, vacuum cleaner running, cards being shuffled and slapped for solitaire, tea kettle on the boil, dishes and silverware being put away with gusto. Oh, for a little silence! Can’t wait till our naptime: my answer to the Benedictine practice of the daily Grand Silence.
- I love silence now, but I remember when it was hard for me to take. It allowed fears to come raging in, and made me feel edgy, as though waiting for ‘the other shoe to fall’. Noise was comforting as a child – I would know my mom was home (so silence was linked for me with loneliness). Noise can feel like cheerful bustle and craziness, reminiscent of parties, great community moments, fun and happiness. It’s not that sound, in itself, is ‘bad’, but that it can become a distraction, and our senses can become dulled if overstimulated.
- *** is not being heard in my life – doesn’t communicate, and I don’t read minds. I’m failing to find more creative ways to try to build that bridge. I am not being heard by *** – so narrowed upon self, so unable to make room for me….
- The mind empty of thought is not in possession of anything the senses could give – like a deaf (and blind) person bereft of knowing-of-the-world, un-affected by reality. Granted that deaf and blind people find other ways to take in reality, if you really could block everything from your mind, you’d end up completely disconnected from reality. Yuk!
- My body reminds me of my need for postural alignment and release of tension by calling out ‘pain!’, especially in my arthritic knee. Hunger is a good symptom of need – I’m learning to be more present to this message, and wait for it rather than eating ‘on time’ (and speeding past my body’s messages!).
- Maria Montessori noticed that agitated children, given handwork to do, became calmer. She called it ‘normalizing’. The engagement of the mind through the senses (tactile, in this case) seemed to waken it. The agitation, restlessness, is sometimes the body’s signal that it needs something outside itself to focus on. (Too often, my quick fix is food, but I’m learning that this need is more often a need for grounding in the body, through sensory engagement – just the body needing to be acknowledged, moved, walked, stretched, touched.)
- I used to have lots of interior ‘noise’ from fears of all different kinds of things. God thoroughly delivered my from all that – Praise to Him! Definitely, Sabbath was key to that release and healing. This is one reason I want to share this message so much! I have seen the power of it in my own life.
- My imagination, if I let it run amok, can get me fearful, or agitated, living too far in the future and undermining my presence to myself and others here and now. My emotions can throw me suddenly out of balance, as they are supposed to do. The emotional response isn’t controlled rationally, but once I experience it, I can exert reasonable influence over it to some extent. Emotions and imagination are both interior movements capable of distracting, unbalancing, agitating me. The more I experience the deep restedness Sabbath gives me, the more I ‘get’ when there’s a disturbance that needs my attention. Also, the Bible tells us to ‘cast down vain imaginations’, and that has been a huge help to me.
- I can return to the quiet ‘center’ of my soul within ten minutes, under most circumstances. Even there, I am not perfectly able to block out distractions. Sabbath gives me practice just knowing what I’m aiming for and having the sense of ‘soul opening’, or ‘soul spaciousness’ to recollect myself when I get derailed.
- In the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord, though we do not hear words, speaks volumes about His own being, His love, His sacrifice, His patience, and what it means to be simply present here, now. We invite Him to speak directly to our souls when we say, “…only say the word, and I shall be healed.” That moment, for me, is so beautiful. In every Mass, I really sense Him saying my name in that moment, full of all that ‘I’ mean to Him., even if I’ve forgotten my Self, or not fully real-ized myself yet, in Him I am whole.
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