I don’t want to drown out the quiet.

It is my companion, one of my oldest friends.

It is almost a place: a place where I can pick things up, and put them down, and let them be.

A place I am part of: not the director or designer, no special role except to delight.

And this deep and steadfast love I feel: for quiet. For stillness. The treadmills stop and we just are–apart from that incessant drive to gain or lose, lose or gain, we just are.

The other day, I asked a friend how he enters into prayer, and he said, “No special way. I am the prayer.”

In the rainy morning, walking down Beacon Street, the whoosh of cars so loud, so present. Sometimes I am the car, but today I’m glad to be the still sidewalk, the intimacy of the buildings I must pass footstep after footstep. There is no blocking out the sound of steps behind me, or approaching; these are real people to be reckoned with, to be seen or from whom to avert eyes. We share this space, these sounds.

I used to sit by myself on the school-bus, head pressed against the glass pane, feeling the drone of the engine and letting my melody flow above it. I do the same thing on the T: my songs are “Midnight Train,” “New Person, Old Place,” “Just the Way You Are” (Billy Joel), and too many to count. When I sing, I am at equilibrium with the world–allowing the energy in me to flow out naturally–swimming in the tide.

When I sing, I am the bird at home, whose song belongs.

I don’t want to fight against the sound of the T, I want to be part of it all. To sing along.

Silence,

When I hold you at arm’s length, when I am afraid too long, I forget how you help me to love. I am afraid of your emptiness until I draw near and realize that you allow me to love everything. It’s without you that I feel missing; in you my missing, my emptiness, becomes complete.