It is 2:41 in California and I just finish writing the last part to a 4 part blog series entitled All In. I said I would deliver the series in 4 day and I did, but I really struggle to get done. I had so many things to carry out this week so I found myself just one day off until 35 minutes ago. I hit the publish button and went to one of my favorite blogs to read and learn and be stretched. All of a sudden I’m gripped by what I am reading and by the time I’m finished, I realized that I had just stepped into my twenty-minute window to listen in silence to the voice of my creator.

A word with power is a word that comes from silence.

So say the Egyptian Desert Fathers of the third century A.D.

So says one of my old spiritual mentors, the late Henri J. M. Nouwen.

So says the life and speech of Mama Maggie of Cairo, one of my new spiritual mentors.

Our world is wordy, says Nouwen, and we all know that. A conflicting, chaotic rush of verbiage. Often we are word-saturated and we tune it all out.  Often it won’t let us ignore it.

Where is silence to be found?

For me it’s a window of about twenty minutes in the early dawn.  Before the dog rushes in, tail flying, near missing my coffee.  Before news and music and blogs and vehicle engine noise rush into my world.

For those early twenty minutes, I am relatively still.  Sometimes, as Mama Maggie prescribed, I silence my thoughts; listen to my heartbeat.  Then I listen to my spirit.

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