Slowly, Silently

I recognized today my desire for communion. For community. I said to God, "I want to build it, like a house, and live in it and enjoy it." At first this seemed a bit selfish to me. Then I read this and began to wonder if this "house" might provide shelter for more than myself. Mmmm. Delightful wondering.
And yet this growth is like the slowness of the silent, forest day. The sun rises, the soft needles drift down, the branches sway, perhaps rain drips down. Nothing noisy, eventful, dramatic happens. Gentle rhythms are the main event. Slowly, silently - growth is happening.


Living things need an appropriate climate in order to grow and bear fruit. If they are to develop to completion, they require an environment that allows their potential to be realized. The seed will not grow unless there is soil that can feed it, light to draw it forth, warmth to nurture and moisture that unlocks its vitality. Time is also required for its growth to unfold.
... Meditation is the attempt to provide the soul with the proper environment in which to grow and become. In the lives of people like St. Francis or St. Catherine of Genoa one gets a glimpse of what the soul is able to become. Often this is seen as the result of heroic action lying beyond the possibility of ordinary people. The flowering of the human soul, however, is more a matter of the proper psychological and spiritual environment than of particular gifts or disposition or heroism. How seldom we wonder at the growth of the great redwood from a tiny seed dropped at random on the littered floor of the forest. From one seed is grown enought wood to frame several hundred houses. The human soul has seed potentional like this if it has the right environment. Remember that only in a few mountain valleys were the conditions right for the Sequoia gigantea, the mighty redwood, to grow.
... For both the seed and the soul, these things all take time. In both cases there is need for patience. Most of us know enough not to poke at the seed to see if it is sprouting, or to try to hurry it along with too much water or fertilizer or cultivation. The same respect must be shown for the soul as its growth starts to take place. Growth can seldom be forced in nature. Whether it is producing a tree or a human personality, nature unfolds it's growth slowly, silently.

~From The Other Side of Silence by Morton T. Kelsey