Now I Am Ready

In Teaching a Stone to Talk Annie Dillard has more to say about the relationship between nature and silence, sound and stillness.

As I re-read and make copious notes I am suddenly called up short by one line: “Now I am ready”.  Wouldn’t that be nice!

I put my pen down and spend some time simply being in the created mystery of her observation hoping it brings me closer to that “readiness”. 

Dillard, much like Mary Oliver, simply pays attention, excruciatingly close attention. 

When one does this, silence prevails. It seems to lie at the heart of all noise and activity. It seems to be some kind of convergence or consolidation of the sounds creation makes into a holy silence. Silence may then be the gathering up of the fragments of sound into a divine harmony.

What does that have to do with being ready? I am thinking the readiness of which Dillard speaks is the readiness to surrender and let God be God. To cut through extraneous noise and center down.

So for a brief moment without pen in hand, without devouring a book for “information”, I rest in the sounds of silence even in a noisy world and I try...again...to let go of my expectations of what to “do” with all this and try to be an open empty vessel to receive. Now I am ready...again.