In the crazy busyness of the day where electric sounds suffuse, even a little chat is often a freeway of words and noise.
And in the midst, he tells me “Just be yourself.” There I am in the small space of silence being undone with nothing to say while I wonder what self.
A friend tells me they’re getting a divorce. The doctor says the tests are positive. I watch: the surge of floods taking homes and lives or images of smoke and debris right after a bombing. After a real serious play or movie. In the waiting room after I hear she is going to die.
In those lonely tiny spaces of darkness I cannot speak.
In those aftermath moments I am silenced.
How do I react to being out of control or make these things normal or fit them into my routine ways of being me?
Silence asserts itself like a wild animal I cannot tame.
At these intervals of being powerless I hope I do not miss the chance to humbly bow in silence and embrace my humanity and smallness in the cosmos where it is utterly trivial to just be my self.
In humble gratitude to Rowan Williams looking forward to his upcoming book: Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons.