Wherever I go, I’m blessed to climb with others into the interior we all share. And after a weekend with a group of kind souls, working to listen to each other without judgment but with care, after we’ve journeyed together honestly, we’re closer than when we came together and what that closeness opens is palpable.
Often, at the end of our time, after I read a last poem, there is a silence that holds us, which is quieter and softer than when we met. Feeling this, I lean into the room and say, “Notice how the silence between us is different now, though we’ve only been together a short time.” Everyone feels it and no one wants to leave. That’s when I lean in further to invite everyone to taste the sweetness in the air. I lean in and say, “Can you feel it? This is what we came for. What lives between us is the real poem. This belongs to everyone.”
A Question to Walk With: Describe your relationship with silence.
This excerpt is from my new book, Drinking from the River of Light, published this fall by Sounds True.
*Photo credit: Abel Tan Jun Yang
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