Thursday, October 15, 2009

Holy Silence

Holy Silence


Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your

name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a (human) be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he (or she) dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”

-Thomas Merton, from The Strange Islands: Poems by Thomas Merton

**The icon above is by Father William Hart McNichols at St. Andrei Rublev IconsHagia Hesychia or Holy Silence)

Next week I will be writing an icon of Holy Silence at the Franciscan Center. For anyone who knows me, Holy Silence will be a stretch.

No comments: