It has been a quiet day here at home. Our children are all off to their respective concerns – Pizza and Jay to work, Dana to her dentist, and Mae to school. Thelma has been busy with business and household matters while I am closeted here in our room with my computer and music, nursing an aging, aching leg.
Silence pervades the whole house. The kind of silence that is light and easy, the comfortable kind of silence. Not the kind of uneasy silence that I once gave Thelma many years ago as we were starting our married life.
“Your silence is deafening, please talk to me,” says the short note that Thelma sent me after I had stopped talking to her for sometime. I wanted to make her feel what I was feeling after she had ignored my pleas for us to talk about certain matters.
Today as I sit here enjoying the silence and quiet of what could be the beginning and initial taste of an empty nest, I start to think of the other kinds of silences.
There is the silence of the parent when a child comes home repentant after having left home to live on his own against the parents’ wishes. It is the silence that lets the child speak out what is in his heart. It is the silence of the Father who welcomes back the Prodigal Son in that famous parable of Jesus in the gospel of Luke. Note that the father said nothing to his son – he simply held his son in silent embrace (Luke 16:21), and in the process spoke a thousand words. It is the silence that loves, forgives, and heals.
And there is the silence of someone who shares the grief of a friend who has suffered a painful loss. It is the silence of just being there that allows a loved one to grieve and let go. It is the compassionate, consoling silence that allows another to just be for now.
How do you regard silence? Are you comfortable with silence and can you greet it like a “friend”?
Silence pervades the whole house. The kind of silence that is light and easy, the comfortable kind of silence. Not the kind of uneasy silence that I once gave Thelma many years ago as we were starting our married life.
“Your silence is deafening, please talk to me,” says the short note that Thelma sent me after I had stopped talking to her for sometime. I wanted to make her feel what I was feeling after she had ignored my pleas for us to talk about certain matters.
Today as I sit here enjoying the silence and quiet of what could be the beginning and initial taste of an empty nest, I start to think of the other kinds of silences.
There is the silence of the parent when a child comes home repentant after having left home to live on his own against the parents’ wishes. It is the silence that lets the child speak out what is in his heart. It is the silence of the Father who welcomes back the Prodigal Son in that famous parable of Jesus in the gospel of Luke. Note that the father said nothing to his son – he simply held his son in silent embrace (Luke 16:21), and in the process spoke a thousand words. It is the silence that loves, forgives, and heals.
And there is the silence of someone who shares the grief of a friend who has suffered a painful loss. It is the silence of just being there that allows a loved one to grieve and let go. It is the compassionate, consoling silence that allows another to just be for now.
How do you regard silence? Are you comfortable with silence and can you greet it like a “friend”?
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