It’s a Thursday night and I’m online with my Writers Group. We’re writing together on our various projects. No one is speaking. The view out my window is calm, still trees and grass becoming green due to spring.
My family is resting. No one needs me. They are used to my writing schedule with my online writers group.
On my bed, writing on my binder clipboard and I feel peace about the present. Hope for the future. Content in the moment. Time to think, time to write. Time to just breathe and just be.
Nothing great nor grand. Just a quiet home with the upstairs neighbors bumping and thumping interrupting the mood. It’s still again.
I think we creatures need both stimulation and stillness. Stability and variety. A state of peace to create from. Perhaps we enter a flow state with our whole being, pouring out of our selves, words or art. Processing over past and reality into something hopefully edifying.
Perhaps our lives are a whirlwind of activities and at the center we are the eye of the storm. Still, quiet, reflective. Life and its many obligations churn on.
Do we have the peace that surpasses understanding or are we consumed with the chaos of financial obligations and necessities? It’s hard to focus when you’re living in financial or medical uncertainty. It can be done.
It’s funny how silence can be a cool, refreshing glass of a water or an oppressive force of nature.
The great sages and church fathers regaled on the discipline of silence. Richard Foster wrote the benchmark book, “Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth”. I sort of remembered that the discipline of silence was suppose to help one better listen and talk with others. To truly hear and be present with others instead of only waiting for them to stop talking so I can say what I want to say.
But in writing, one has the floor and the reader chooses to listen or not.
What drives us to go on social media or read a book? To discover something new? Find connection? To be moved in an unexpected way?
It’s been several weeks now of writing group sessions. Another time of silence while we each work on our writing projects.
This silence isn’t stifling, but focused calm. Together we write, create and edit our words for you readers.
Meeting of minds across distance and time in the quiet pages of a book.
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