Tensioned Silence

silence

at once arrogant and shrill

speaks truth about relations

louder than words could cloak

as these stand at the threshold looking

staring blank past their eyes pleading

their lips sealed against knowledge

that would free the caged Bird

silence

like God is silent

yet slaying

like God can slay

speaking

holds them tensioned

attending to each other's absence

and presence

brushing each other

like a whispered hope

a fermenting dream

believing that one day

someday

forgiveness will bloom

embrace

kiss

and wonder why it took so long 

to speak

*Solitude is not necessarily a retreat from communion.  The deepening of subjectivity can be liberating for others.  A day can come when you will belong totally to yourself - that is, to what created you, when alleluia breaks forth.  Then you'll no longer want to wall yourself  in, and in communion with all things you'll rejoin the universal in a vital experience.  You will still sweat blood, but a tiny unshakable joy awaits you in every corner.
-Jean Sulivan


*Don't take away anyone else's certitudes.  Everything ripens in its time.
-Jean Sulivan


* Strangle the phrase with which you were going to compare the present with the past or fear for your future.  Leap into the present instant; the past or and the future are contained within it, and it carries its load of the eternal.  Stop torturing yourself, poisoning your own life.  Disappointed hopes, a broken heart - she has wounded me to death, he has destroyed me - what vanities these are!  Happiness is not in happiness; it's in the unending process.  Then let's get going, live as long as you're alive, do something, something absurd. Or better, who knows, if you've just had dinner, quietly do the dishes.
-Jean Sulivan