Silence

To celebrate my 41st birthday, I attend a silent retreat. 

I go alone to be alone. It is a time for being with being. It is a time for deep listening, an invitation for the Divine to whisper me a word, an idea, an image, an emotion, a transformation. 

For two days, I live in a sacred and elegant space in the mountains. I greet trees with elephant trunk limbs. I meet the glorious round moon. I gaze at a lake in the folded legs of the Earth. I move and bend and breathe on yoga mats. I eat delicious, healthy meals. I sip lots of herbal tea. And I walk in the cold breeze on paths of flattened grass. 

I once wondered if I was made for a life of silence and stillness in a rustic mountaintop monastery.

In my monkish solitude, I relish my anonymousness. No one needs to know me and my story. I can sit and eat. I can journal without interruption. I can swing beneath a happy tree, watching black birds scatter and gather in the naked darkening sky. In my monkish solitude, I remember how to slow down. I remember how to be quiet. I remember how to smell and taste and feel.  I remember how to listen to me - to eat when I am hungry, sleep when I am sleepy, and wake when I am ready. 

On a walk, I ask, Was I made to be a monk? To live my life in isolation, contemplation, devotion, and prayer?

No no! My soul shakes with giggles. 

I am no monk. I seek moments of monkish solitude, stillness, silence, and devotion. I want to be in monkish contemplation and isolation. And I want to pray through play. I want to take my light and shine it with the light of others. 

In my silence, stillness, and solitude, I honor my soul, spirit, breath, - my being. And I honor my flesh, bones, blood, organs, - my body. In an extravagantly simple ceremony, I honor the world of my whole gorgeous self!