Volume X, Issue 28
December 22, 2021
Word of the Week: silence
Dear ,
There's a lot of "holly jolly" around here. much of it revolving around these three lovable noisemakers!
# When you keep your grandkids for a December weekend and—shortly after they set up the Nativity scene made by your talented sister, Mary—Finnegan, their Elf on the Shelf,
magically travels from their house to yours to "photo bomb" it!
'
(I know next to nothing about hashtags, but I can't resist making ridiculously long ones up.) There's a "footnote" to this one. Our youngest grandchild, Ellie, came back with her mom a few days after this photo was taken, and they both begged me to give the nativity set to them. After all, I have another one, and they did not.
Besides, how could I say no to this face?
Especially when I know that my sister will be happy that her niece and family are loving her adorable hand-crafted and painted
set.
There's a lot more noise and merriment ahead, given our large family, so today is the perfect day for a "throwback" Word-zine. This one's from December 22, 2014, and is every bit as fitting today as it was exactly seven years ago:
Such a full time of year, December. Often such a noisy time of year, even if much of it is joyful noise. I don't know about you, but the busier and louder my life gets, the more I need at least a small pocket of silence in my days.
So most December mornings, while it's still dark, I make my way to my prayer spot—the faded flowered wing chair I've been sitting in since I was a very small child. (Lucky me, that none of my siblings wanted it!) I light a candle, read a few inspiring words, and then I close my eyes for at least seven minutes of pure silence, just me and my breath and my beating heart.
Sometimes, I feel the same hushed, reverent way I did when I was a small child, listening to the words in the carols I loved: "Silent night, holy night...," "...above they deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by..."
My wish for you this week, no matter what faith you practice (or don't), is that you'll take at least a few moments to experiment with the gifts silence offers. If you'd like some inspiration, author Kathleen Norris's essay on silence from her Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of
Faith is below in which she speaks, among other things, of how silence can "liberate the imagination."
Love and light and liberation,
Maureen
“
Over the years when I worked as an artist in elementary schools I devised an exercise for the children regarding noise and silence. I'll make a deal with you, I said—first you get to make noise, and then
you'll make silence.
The rules for noise were simple: when I raise my hand, I told them, you make all the noise you can while sitting at your desk, using your mouth, hands, and feet. The kids' eyes would grow wide—and the
teacher's as well—so I'd add, the important thing is that when I lower my hand, you have to stop.
I found that we'd usually have to make two or three attempts to attain an acceptable din—shouting, pounding, stomping. The wonder is, we never got caught. Maybe because the roar lasted for just a few
seconds and school principals assumed that they'd imagined the whole thing.
The rules for silence were equally simple. Don't hold your breath and make funny faces, I learned to say, as this is how third graders typically imagine silence. Just breathe normally but quietly: the only
hard thing is to sit so still that you make no noise at all. We always had to try this more than once. A pencil would roll down someone’s desk, or someone would shift in a seat. But in every case but one, over many years, I found that children were able to become so still that silence became a presence in the classroom.
Some kids loved it. I believe it was a revelation to them, and certainly to their teachers, that they could be so quiet. “Let's do it again, “ they'd say. Others weren't so sure. “It's scary, “
a fifth grader complained. “Why? “ I asked, and I believe that he got to the heart of it when he replied, “It's like we're waiting for something—it's scary! “
The only time I encountered a class that was unable to reach a point of stillness, I learned the reason why when I happened to arrive early for class one day. Their teacher was shrieking commands at
them—Write, don't print your name in the upper right-hand corner of the paper; set a left-hand margin and keep it; use a pencil, not a pen; line the paper up with the edge of your desk for collection. These children had so many little rules barked at them all day long by a burned-out teacher that they had stopped listening, which surely is a prerequisite for silence.
What interests me most about my experiment is the way in which making silence liberated the imagination of so many children. Very few wrote with any originality about making noise. Most of their images
were clichés such as “we sound like a herd of elephants. “ But silence was another matter: here, their images often had a depth and maturity that was unlike anything else they wrote. One boy came up with an image of strength as being “as slow and silent as a tree, “ another wrote that “Silence is sleeping waiting to wake up. Silence is a tree spreading its branches to the sun. “ In a parochial school, one third grader's poem turned into a prayer: “Silence is spiders
spinning their webs, it's like a silkworm making its silk. Lord, help me to know when to be silent. “ And in a tiny town in western North Dakota a little girl offered a gem of spiritual wisdom that I find myself returning to when my life becomes too noisy and distractions overwhelm me: “Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go.”
Read more from Amazing Grace at Google Books here.
Click the title to learn more about Read more from Amazing Grace.
WordPlay Now! Writing Prompt
This is WordPlay—so why not revel in the power and potential of one good word after another? This
week, it's "silence."
PROMPT:
Choice 1:
Set a
timer and give yourself seven minutes of pure silence. All you have to do is breathe. Notice that the world didn't stop when you did. (I find this very reassuring.)
Choice 2:
Write about silence, in any genre or any way that you wish.
It's fun to play with prompts in community with fellow writers, and to be able to share the results when you're done. You can find out about WordPlay classes, workshops, and retreats here.
MAUREEN RYAN GRIFFIN, an award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, is the author of Spinning Words into Gold, a Hands-On Guide to the Craft of
Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three collections of poetry, Ten Thousand Cicadas Can't Be Wrong, This Scatter of Blossoms and When the Leaves Are in the Water.
She believes, as author Julia Cameron says, "We are meant to midwife dreams for one another." Maureen also believes that serious "word work" requires serious WordPlay, as play is how we humans best
learn—and perform. What she loves best is witnessing all the other dreams that come true for her clients along the way. Language, when used with intentionality and focus, is, after all, serious fuel for joy. Here's to yours!
|
|
|
|