What are the sounds of silence? What speaks when we are brave enough to be still? What song does creation sing as we wake to a new language that might sound foreign?
As my beloved other Mom propped herself up on one elbow in her hospice room, the wide smile and tears of joy indicated that she was so happy to see me. As I sat holding her hand, wiping the sweat from her brow as she took laboring breaths, one at a time, the tears came to me, flooded through me, rendering me raspy and reaching for my own breath. “I don’t know how to say good-bye to you.” She winced. And then smiled. She was breathing into the pain. “Talk to me,” she said. “Anything. Something little. Mountains out of molehills, heartaches and dreams, hilarious anythings. Talk to me.” And I did, whiling her last days and hours away with our shared bond, the Love that is stronger than death. Words may be a source of healing and strength, but silence is the elixir of transformation.
When my canine companion of 17 1/2 years lay panting beside me on the morning of her dying-day, I searched her oceanic eyes for any indication of hope. The Light was already leaving her eyes. There were no words between us, only breath. And Love. She died in my arms and I howled with the pain of her leaving. Howled from the depths of my being. She had communicated with her pack this way for so long, I knew the sacred song by heart. And now I knew the depths of that language of Love, that clarion of howling for the pack. Sometimes there are no words. And the sound we make is other-worldly.
When the derecho inundated us with disaster last August, this bio-region experienced an area-wide hospice as our arbor-elders lay gasping, twisted, mangled, uprooted and torn from their subterranean matrix. As these gorgeous creatures of Light lay dying, and we accompanied them in our hushed reverence, I heard their soulful requiem rising from the Earth. Their soul-songs were all coalescing in the breeze, the Great Wind/Spirit that was calling them home. They were singing their ancient song, and it was being implanted in our psyche, our soul. Planting seeds for hope, for new Life.
“Now, it might sound crazy,” one of my coffee-klatch ladies confided in whispered tones, “but I talk with my plants.”
“Not at all!” I reassured her. “I talk with mine all the time! And I water them with my tears, and I laugh with them and dance with them as they grow. We share our journeys. They’re some of my best friends in the world.”
How will we ever learn to communicate in the Mother-tongue, the primary language of Love, if we don’t learn the language of Earth and her creatures?
The cardinals are singing their sweet melody beneath the apple tree to serenade my days. Mourning doves coo me into being each morning. Bullfrogs rejoice in the fecundity of the rain. Cicadas lull me to sleep each night and owl-song weaves throughout my dreams. They are singing as One. “Talk to me!” calls the Creator.
Everyone sings the sweetest song, their psalms of hope, psalms of lamentation, psalms of gratitude, psalms of overflowing joy. When we listen with the heart of Love, the song of Life reverberates throughout creation. What is your soul singing? What is your heart saying?
“Talk to me!”
—Laura Weber, Prairiewoods associate director and retreats coordinator