“Why meet in silence?” you ask,

The silence is. No more, no less. Allowing everyone, everything to be what they are, it breathes us.

“Well, that’s simple enough” you say, “but it seems uninteresting.”

No, no. Silence is not absence. The birds still sing, traffic roars distantly, rain patters and dogs bark. Only the chatter is gone, so life can be heard growing.

“Ah – A meditation!” you say, “Stillness.”

Each soul drawn inward, yes, seeking its own depth in reflection, looking to find a pattern behind the busy-ness of daily weaving, resting and stopping to be able to see. But there are layers of silence. Stillness is just the way in, an opening.

“Opening where?” you ask. “What lies beyond this quieting?“

Hard to say, hard to say. You’ll know when you try. It is connection, a linking of essences. Spirit collapsing into itself, knowing itself again beyond self or wants. Something is clearer then, returning to self, but alone it can’t be known. It is the sharing which shows the way.

“So togetherness, communion,” you say “A meeting of minds. Could happen anywhere.”

Just so, yet you forget the seeking. Companionship on the road is not the point. We come to meet some Other. Nor do we travel beside ourselves, uncaring or directionless. We care. This communion is holy – not of the mind nor of bodies, this is of the spirit, soaring free. We strive to reach, borne by the element in which we move, questing.

“Oh, new age stuff” you say, “Trance states, out of the body, that sort of thing.”

Forgive my smile. Not absence, I said, but presence.

Here, in the precision of a moment, in the fall of a raindrop, the catch of a breath, it is a fullness of being, wholly experienced, held. The body may shake with knowing while the mind is given words and the spirit senses connectedness.

And it is more than this, still.

“All this is beyond me.” you say.

There. You begin to understand.

Join the silence and explore how it opens you.