She said the music made her wonder; does it alter us more to be heard or to hear?~Madeleine Thien

I didn't think I missed it. The salt marsh I walked to almost daily for over ten years. Yesterday I had to drive over to the old neighborhood to check the PO Box, then found myself driving down to the creek at the end of the road where I used to live. Sadness washed over me. I realized I'd missed the creek's presence, its silence. The solitude. Sitting in my car there by the water, I felt an "after" grief, a dawning of losing something.

I don't believe I'd faced the loss until then. Maybe couldn't face it was more honest.

Giovanni and I threw ourselves so thoroughly into moving after my retirement that I was consumed with the process. Until now. We have settled. It is quiet, and I have craved this silence, this solitude for many years. Perhaps that's what the tidal marsh did for me--created a tangible metaphor for that which I hungered.

Now I have what I've desired--space, margin and an unhurried pace. Yet I'm not sure what to do with it.

Silence and solitude are spiritual disciplines. I thought I was more skilled in these practices than I am. Better at "being" than "doing." I am not. I still put a lot of stock in lists and productivity. Don't feel comfortable without an agenda. I'm attracted to the silence--want to learn its messages. I want to be attentive as I sit immersed in God's blessed silence. I want to listen well.

Dr. Ruth Haley Barton, spiritual director, author, teacher and founder of Transforming Center, expalins that entering silence is like river water. When the water is agitated, sediment is stirred up and the water becomes murky. When the disturbance ceases, the sediment sinks to the bottom and the river's surface becomes clear. Dr. Barton says that the noise and bustle of our lives can act like the stirred river water. When we enter into stillness and silence, the sediment drifts down and calmly settles. We then have increased ability to listen to ourselves and to God. To see with more clarity.

Retirment may be that place of settlement (I unconsciously used that verb earlier--now we are settled) where solitude, silence and stillness becomes my agenda, my school.

Living Water by Frenando Ortega is playing now through my headphones, the rippling chords of the melody like the calm, still surface of the tidal creek.