Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had a beautiful song called The Sound of Silence which was a catalyst that started opening my mind to exploration. For nearly sixty years.
As I wrote this piece, this sound would come into my awareness from time to time, like a whisper, like silence itself. I am enchanted to read this song catalyzed your exploration into silence. And that you stayed with it these years.
Reading the Latin word desinere, the word for silence or stop, my mind saw desire. This is not a trick of the eye but my heartfelt longing to walk through the world in this way. At this stage of my life I am pulling on the threads of my cultural and familial conditioning and desinere is taking a back seat, yet I feel its yearning. Thank you for this series Renee.
Thank you for sharing this personal reflection. I echo what I've recently shared with you: I always appreciate the transparency you bring to the page. I hope others read your words here.
". . . pulling on the threads of my cultural and familial conditioning and desinere is taking a back seat, yet I feel its yearning." Isn't it so that we must work at undoing to get to silence?
Thank God for the yearning.
Teaser: (and good eye, you!) Sunday's letter will show a kinship between desinere and desire.
Renée, this is beautifully and poetically written. Inviting me in, to feel the silence behind each word, every letter. I do believe silence resides in paradox. It is one side to the two sided coin. Sound and silence are dependent on each other, it is the only way music can happen. How life is birthed.
This is beautiful: "Sound and silence are dependent on each other, it is the only way music can happen. How life is birthed." One gets the sense of Lao Tzu writing of the Tao in reading you here.
Thank you
(I'm behind on reading and have your desert piece saved. I am looking foward.) 🙏
Silence is one of my favorite human/earthly experiences, and it’s never felt like a void, but a living, breathing experience of fullness, of sublime communion. You’ve expressed and examined this so beautifully here Renée. As usual, I will likely return to this essay many times, like drinking from a well of wisdom.
What arises in me,Renee, is how richly generous you are offering your annotated bibs each week, reflecting the depth and breadth of your scholarship. This is supplemental to your deeply aesthetic, poetic, phenomenological writing!
It gladdens me so to imagine the notes supporting further inquiry. I often feel these Sunday short-form reflections are appetizers for any full meal of inquiry on any given theme on the phenomenology of being!
"It is not that silence is vacuous. It is that its vastness is so immediate and so remembered that it takes our breath away. We need not be afraid of the silence we run from." Why do we run from silence? My first response is that it somehow means death, when I assume there will be eternal silence. I notice how often people are afraid to be together in silence, unless it's a planned silence; then it's rather peaceful and often a relief not to speak. How many people have their TV's on all the time in the background? Is it just narcissism that makes some people talk incessantly and avoid silence? I lead a process group, and when there occurs a natural pause, a silence, all of us feel a discomfort in that absence of speech. What is it that causes that discomfort? I can conjecture several reasons for that discomfort; all on the interpersonal level, which contributes to the dis-ease, but I do suspect the deepest and most hidden reason is the fear of nothingness, of death. Yet, when we allow that silence to be present, and dwell in it, it is so often a profound experience; of letting go; of surrendering; of just being without doing; of being part of the whole; without effort. What a relief that is; not to have to do anything, but be present. And it allows us to experience the primordial silence that permeates the universe, both without and within. I think this poem by Wendell Berry speaks both to the fear of silence and the yearning for it as well. "When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things, who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water and feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and I'm free."
You ask a good question and point us in a good direction by guiding us to our fear of death. My sense is that fear and desire are coupled in the tendency to talk . . . and, as Wendell Berry offers in the poem you share, in our dance with silence. It is said that absence is the beginning of desire. The challenge for us as humans is to let the absence be perceived. Then the response to the desire is not automaton response to fear. We could ask ourselves the question: What behavior(s) am I enacting so that I do not feel what I do not want to feel?
Please don't feel obliged to reply here, but I just wanted to pop in to say how much I loved this, and especially this line: "And make each atom of our being an ear." I see the self as a vast collective and have often believed that a great way to get all those parts in alignment is through music. Of course, silence as the ever-faithful companion is perhaps the hollow channel, the container, for music and carries the potency for alignment even deeper. I am reminded again of the Sefer Yetzirah and am contemplating silence as this channel upon which reality is engraved. Thank you, as always, for your beautiful guiding wisdom! ❤️
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had a beautiful song called The Sound of Silence which was a catalyst that started opening my mind to exploration. For nearly sixty years.
Michael,
As I wrote this piece, this sound would come into my awareness from time to time, like a whisper, like silence itself. I am enchanted to read this song catalyzed your exploration into silence. And that you stayed with it these years.
Thank you. 🙏
Reading the Latin word desinere, the word for silence or stop, my mind saw desire. This is not a trick of the eye but my heartfelt longing to walk through the world in this way. At this stage of my life I am pulling on the threads of my cultural and familial conditioning and desinere is taking a back seat, yet I feel its yearning. Thank you for this series Renee.
Donna,
Thank you for sharing this personal reflection. I echo what I've recently shared with you: I always appreciate the transparency you bring to the page. I hope others read your words here.
". . . pulling on the threads of my cultural and familial conditioning and desinere is taking a back seat, yet I feel its yearning." Isn't it so that we must work at undoing to get to silence?
Thank God for the yearning.
Teaser: (and good eye, you!) Sunday's letter will show a kinship between desinere and desire.
I look forward to Sunday's letter.
Renée, this is beautifully and poetically written. Inviting me in, to feel the silence behind each word, every letter. I do believe silence resides in paradox. It is one side to the two sided coin. Sound and silence are dependent on each other, it is the only way music can happen. How life is birthed.
Julie,
This is beautiful: "Sound and silence are dependent on each other, it is the only way music can happen. How life is birthed." One gets the sense of Lao Tzu writing of the Tao in reading you here.
Thank you
(I'm behind on reading and have your desert piece saved. I am looking foward.) 🙏
Silence is one of my favorite human/earthly experiences, and it’s never felt like a void, but a living, breathing experience of fullness, of sublime communion. You’ve expressed and examined this so beautifully here Renée. As usual, I will likely return to this essay many times, like drinking from a well of wisdom.
Kimberly,
A "sublime communion," a presence with a presence. Yes.
Clearly, you have long drunk from this well of wisdom that is silence.
Thank you for your kind words. 🙏
What arises in me,Renee, is how richly generous you are offering your annotated bibs each week, reflecting the depth and breadth of your scholarship. This is supplemental to your deeply aesthetic, poetic, phenomenological writing!
I hope others are noticing that.
This is a gift
Megan,
It gladdens me so to imagine the notes supporting further inquiry. I often feel these Sunday short-form reflections are appetizers for any full meal of inquiry on any given theme on the phenomenology of being!
Thank you for your kind words. 🙏
"It is not that silence is vacuous. It is that its vastness is so immediate and so remembered that it takes our breath away. We need not be afraid of the silence we run from." Why do we run from silence? My first response is that it somehow means death, when I assume there will be eternal silence. I notice how often people are afraid to be together in silence, unless it's a planned silence; then it's rather peaceful and often a relief not to speak. How many people have their TV's on all the time in the background? Is it just narcissism that makes some people talk incessantly and avoid silence? I lead a process group, and when there occurs a natural pause, a silence, all of us feel a discomfort in that absence of speech. What is it that causes that discomfort? I can conjecture several reasons for that discomfort; all on the interpersonal level, which contributes to the dis-ease, but I do suspect the deepest and most hidden reason is the fear of nothingness, of death. Yet, when we allow that silence to be present, and dwell in it, it is so often a profound experience; of letting go; of surrendering; of just being without doing; of being part of the whole; without effort. What a relief that is; not to have to do anything, but be present. And it allows us to experience the primordial silence that permeates the universe, both without and within. I think this poem by Wendell Berry speaks both to the fear of silence and the yearning for it as well. "When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things, who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water and feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and I'm free."
Ed,
You ask a good question and point us in a good direction by guiding us to our fear of death. My sense is that fear and desire are coupled in the tendency to talk . . . and, as Wendell Berry offers in the poem you share, in our dance with silence. It is said that absence is the beginning of desire. The challenge for us as humans is to let the absence be perceived. Then the response to the desire is not automaton response to fear. We could ask ourselves the question: What behavior(s) am I enacting so that I do not feel what I do not want to feel?
Thank you for this, Ed.
With love,
Renée
Please don't feel obliged to reply here, but I just wanted to pop in to say how much I loved this, and especially this line: "And make each atom of our being an ear." I see the self as a vast collective and have often believed that a great way to get all those parts in alignment is through music. Of course, silence as the ever-faithful companion is perhaps the hollow channel, the container, for music and carries the potency for alignment even deeper. I am reminded again of the Sefer Yetzirah and am contemplating silence as this channel upon which reality is engraved. Thank you, as always, for your beautiful guiding wisdom! ❤️