You are in the midst of some form of trauma. Healing found in silence is available.
If you are fighting against injustice today, you need the nourishment of silence to sustain you through tomorrow.
External, physical violence against black bodies originates in a noisy, wounded, empty soul. Where does healing come from? What will end the violence?
St. Augustine wrote: “Why do you want to speak and not listen? You’re always rushing out of doors and are unwilling to return to your own house. Your teacher is within.“
Fr Martin Laird writes: “ Indeed silence does more than tiptoe around the house. Silence moves through sound like water through a netting. The deeper our own interior silence, the more we take on its gracious ways of opening up the tight mind that clenches its teeth around what it wants and spits out what it doesn’t want.”
Our clenched teeth will be loosened by silence.
Bob, a friend who studied spiritual direction with me, said all of the above in another way:
”We are only as gentle with others as we are with ourselves.”
Our Zoom Q&A with Fr Laird is Thursday July 9, 2pm EST. More information is available HERE.
Watch a video invitation to this new series