The pressure and pull of a noisy day denies us the comfort of God.
It is a day in which we are buffeted by the world around us
and left at the mercy of the clatter and jangle of our own hearts.
To be a contemplative we must put down the cacophony of the world around us
and go inside ourselves to wait for the God
who is a whisper not a storm.
Quote: Joan Chittister, One House
Mindfulbalance
There are times when everything seems so quiet. The kind of quiet that you notice. No music, no buzz of the computer, no sound of airplanes overhead – the kind of quiet that can feel unsettling. We are so accustomed to noise that we live much of our lives oblivious to how it surrounds us. Only when some of this noise is removed do we notice a difference.
And then there is the quiet Holy Saturday. The quiet that has nothing to do with noise around us. This day is about silence. The absence of a certain noise; the beating of a heart, the sound of the breath – an absence that suspends time. On this day everything is longed for. There is no surprise to the silence but instead a keen recognition of all that is missing.
Like the gray noise of the TV station off the air, we know we are in between. Between what has been and what is to come.
For many this Saturday is a time for preparation. Like being called on to stay alert and ready, we bustle about knowing that the sun will rise on Sunday to a new understanding. A grand announcement – that death was not the end, that life once again fills the air. Yet no matter how busy one seems preparing for the next sunrise… the fact remains, this day – this Saturday’s silence creates a void that cannot be filled.
Holy Saturday is a hard day. Holy Saturday is an important day. In the absence of a beating heart, our own hearts move in time. Not our time but God’s time. This day cannot be rushed.
It can only be lived.
The smallest of things… (thank you, David Kanigan)
The Pantheon of Smallness was a way of thinking about smallness differently. Sometimes we make small things, sometimes there are small bird songs, but it can have an enormous impact. Sometimes you have to whisper to be heard. Our culture is very much one of “bigging it up,” always upping the noise level in order to produce a louder signal. What you see in the bird world is sometimes that the smallest tweet can actually pierce through the cacophony in a different way. That became a metaphor for thinking about art. Emily Dickinson did quite miniature work that had a very profound, almost epic, impact, culturally speaking.
~ Kyo Maclear, from How a stressed woman found solace through looking at birds (Macleans, January 22, 2017)
Find Kyo Maclear’s new book on Amazon: Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation
Photo: Thank you Sawsan @ Last Tambourine
Carrie's Bench 
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