Surrendering to Silence: Tuesday's Reflection

The snow continues to fall here in Minnesota. Snow and more snow and yet more snow. 

One benefit of changed plans and one cancellation after another is the gift of solitude. Of stillness. Of silence. 

A friend sent me a poem, "A Winter Wonderland Psalm" by Edward Hays, which beautifully expresses the benefits of being snowed in, yet again. Here are some of my favorite lines from this poem:

Be still, my soul, like a winter landscape
      which is wrapped in the white prayer
     shawl
     of silent snow fringed with icy
     threads.
Be still, O my body, like an icy pond
     frozen at attention, at rest yet alert.








and the last stanza:

         Be still so that you can discover slowly, day by day,
                   that God and you are one,
                   to know in that Wonder-of-Wonderlands
                   who you really are.

During my morning meditation time recently I have been reading Writing as a Path to Awakening, A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened Life by Albert Flynn DeSilver. Instead of reading one chapter a month I have read a chapter every day. The morning I received the Edward Hays poem I read the May chapter, which focuses on imagination and the art of the image. DeSilver offers several steps for jump-starting your imagination. 

The third step, "Surrendering to Silence" is the one that grabbed my attention and not just for the way it addresses ways a writer can cultivate the imagination, but also because it highlights a basic spiritual principle. 

       Spend time in silence every day, lest you remain caught
       in the chronic chatter of the world, with all its 
       opinion-slinging and mechanical celebrations of the 
       mundane...At a certain point, it is essential to just stop
       and let it all go...Letting go should be a daily practice...
       If you give yourself to silent meditation every day, you
       will never be at a loss for peace and calm, for deep
       connection; ...Yes, of course, you will still experience
       sadness, doubt, fear, and anxiety, but over time you
       will become friendly with these visitors; you won't
       get snagged by them, and the spaciousness within 
       you will grow to accommodate the totality of being
       human... (pp. 80-81)

How is this related to the poem by Hays? What does surrendering to silence have to do with winter? 

If you feel challenged by undesired hibernation time, perhaps you can imagine yourself invited to wrap up in a white prayer shawl and to enter into silent time. Perhaps the silence of the snow falling and the expanse of the unbroken white is an invitation to release, to nurture your inner quiet. 

I was recently reminded of the term "Spiritual Positioning System," (SPS). Like a GPS, when our SPS is functioning well we have a better understanding of where we are, and I think that includes knowing who we are and our true nature, the person we were created to be. When we adopt silence as a spiritual practice, we are more likely to hear answers, responses, even the bidding of the Divine. And then we are more prepared for the next season of our life. 

An Invitation
How is your SPS functioning these days? I would love to know.