As so often happens, this wasn't originally the plan. I actually wrote yesterday, but wasn't entirely happy with the essay, postponed printing it, and now have chucked it.
From Friday afternoon through Monday morning, I will be sitting in silence, away from all media and communications. Some of my marching friends may see this as avoidance, and I don't know as I blame them. My heart is certainly with them and I thrill that there will be marches all over the world. But here's the way I look at it. This is not "me, holing myself up in my comfortable home, above the fray." Indeed, I really haven't had a home (in any true sense of the word) my whole life. I am the Queen of "the fray"; I seem to have chosen a path of regular insecurity, discomfort and change. One might think that this leaves me singularly prepared for a moment such as this, and in a way that is true. My only "home" is who I am. And I am not an activist so much as I am a mystic, possibly not a great mystic, but a mystic nonetheless. And I did not wish to "react" on this energetically intense weekend and be someone I am not.
I won't spend the weekend thinking superficially "nice," "happy" thoughts either. I wish I could, but I won't lie. I feel so forever changed by the events of the last few months that I am struggling to find an iota of innocent joy, to hear even a few notes of my inner music. I will try to hold at least a relatively positive energy, but my main goal will be to try to rise as far above these events as I can, and see them in the widest possible spiritual and historical perspective. In the silence, I hope to get some clues as to where, in this new context, my own gifts are calling me.
Silence does have a sound, a resonance. It has a power all its own. May my little honest silence ring loud and true.
