Every once and awhile as I head into my last Sunday of the month day of silence I feel less enthusiastic ~ like sometimes before I do my yoga, I think “uggghhh” I don’t feel like doing this. On the rare occasions when this happens, as it did last night, I go into the day with an open mind and heart. Maybe this practice is complete? Am I done with this? Is it still relevant?
As this day unfolds, pretty much like when I sit down on my yoga mat and do my hour of practice, I feel deeply nourished and grateful. What is it about silence? It’s like an intentional 24 hours of prayer – of contemplation – about what matters. What matters to me? What matters to this world? What has real impact? I’m able to hold these questions and others and let them simmer, cook and offer up their wisdom to my heart and psyche. I feel my heart open often – with love for this world and all it’s remarkable diversity – much of which I don’t understand or necessarily agree with but it is all a part of the whole. The constant dance between shadow and light, chaos and coherence, fragmentation and connection.
I sigh a lot throughout the day ~ as if layers of stress are peeling off and out of my cells. It all seems so counterintuitive that being quiet, not talking, taking things slowly, sitting and sighing is somehow “productive” and a genuine antidote to the crazy, divisive stuff happening these days. But it truly feels like the balm needed as a counterbalance.
All day I kept coming back to the word “prayer”…There is a prayer in my day that unfurls in a quiet way. A prayer based in love for all this is. A prayer that believes my quiet, careful attention matters and is the most authentic offering of peace, blessing and wisdom I can give.
As the evening comes, there is no question that practicing silence – for me - is still relevant, super important and deeply, deeply nourishing to my body, mind, heart and the planet. The fact that there are others joining me in this practice, in their own form of prayer, makes it feel like my own prayer is amplified. I am so grateful for this.
With love, Peri
I was reading your words and breathing into the atmosphere where they came from, yesterday on my way home from 10 days in silent retreat, by the ocean on the west coast of Denmark. There is a group of twelve horses living near by the retreat place- I’m always thinking of you, Peri, when visiting them. It’s like the group of horses also are in retreat, radiating profound silence. Like a mirror.
When reading again today well home again, my feeling is that you yourself, through that last Sunday, became the prayer.
Warmth thank you for sharing about experiences of resistance, my sense is that your voice adresses something important within the whole Wellkeeper system.