It has been a powerful 36 hours.  Today is my day of Silence, but yesterday was the anniversary of a day for me full of grief and loneliness, so I gifted myself a day long Gospel singing workshop.  I had never sung Gospel, but felt that it was a place to find words and comfort for my grief.  I was not mistaken.  A day of powerful soul felt singing, in community, and with respect for the suffering from which those songs were born. Gospel singing is about going on, moving on, holding on.  It is about trusting, receiving, believing. It is about not giving up, about being strong, about loving, and lifting you head up.  It is about “making your way out of no way”.  It’s about healing your sorrow and your spirit, about shelter from the rain and the pain, and never turning back.  On and on, the songs filled me with hope and faith and grace. And I only speak of yesterday to set the stage for my day of Silence.  And another piece of past, setting the stage, is that I often quest out on a piece of land in silence, deeply listening, sleeping under the stars, fasting, asking the land for guidance, and opening my heart to the knowing that I am but a humble part of a wholeness.  And while questing I listen to dreams from the land as added guidance. So in the early morning hours of this day of silence, this 24 hours of listening, I awoke with the deepest sense of peace and the words echoing that “I had laid it at the feet of God”. I knew it was a gift to me to be listened to from our collective well.  Now, let it be known that my relationship with God is a mixture of my grandmother’s words “there but for the grace of God go I” and my mother’s words of “Go God go!!” when she would see an especially exquisite field of wildflowers.  I find solace and spiritual connection in the quiet of the woods or on top of a mountain.  I am not much of a church goer.  But this morning I was well aware that it is all one and the same.  Laying burdens down in a field of wildflowers . . .  on a snowy peak . . or at the feet of God.

And my day has been awash with that feeling of deep peace, of release, of acceptance, of community, and a sense of reverence and laying down of a burden. Laying down my offering.  At the gospel workshop I was told that the I in gospel singing really means WE. Did you know that Charles Albert Tindley, an African American minister, in the early 1900s wrote the hymn "I'll Overcome Some Day”? Who today doesn’t know it as “We Shall Overcome”?  And so today, in the quiet of my living room, I am living in that river of time, that river of oneness, that river of WE. . . past, present and future.  I am basking in the realization that the I that I have been so attached to is the WE.  Quite literally every one of us is the WE.  Every action, every pain, every joy and success comes from the collective, the interwoven, the traumas of the past and the beauty and dedication of every person living into life to the best of their ability.  I am not alone. There is no line I can draw, no boundary between the me and my life and my influence, and the you and your life and your influence.  And the past joys and wars and weddings and famines, they all live on in our very cells. It is but the blink of an eye.  It is all here, around and within us, the WE. 

It has been a magically quiet day, full of love and light and peace . . . and not a hint of loneliness.  May we all be blessed, individually and collectively. May we know that we belong.  The well is deep, the well is wide, and we are all of and in the well. May we be good stewards and know the power of our words and deeds as they ripple out to join the masses. We are one living breathing organism hurtling through space. Enjoy the miracle of it all, and tend it with love and compassion.