Sound of Sweet Silence

Almost immediately after I set up the new blog, I found myself at a loss for words... Or maybe that is not quite accurate... I found myself bewildered by the form, and struggling to sort out which voice this might be, and how it might fit into the many forms of communication I practice in my life.  I have journaled for years and years, and have 4 or 5 boxes of journals in my closet--but that private writing of my soul doesn't quite fit in with this public forum, especially as a person with an already public life as a minister.  And as a minister, I have other forums for expression, most notably preaching, that marvelous challenge and gift to which I devote two days of my life each week, plus Sunday mornings.  Preaching is a distillation of my thoughts and feelings and spirit stirrings in the cauldron of communal life, the relationship with my church community.  And preaching also becomes a public voice, for the sermons appear on our church website in written and podcasting form.   

Then there are the many other forms of communication in the work of ministry.  I have said that most of ministry is about talking and listening, in one form or another.  Meetings with groups, chats over dinner, phone calls, hospital visits, listening to the intimate revelations of the heart.  Not to mention the public voice, the letters to the editor, the presence in the work of particular struggles for justice.  And each of these spinning threads of connection between myself and other people.   So it was easy at first to imagine the blog as another forum, another avenue of expression and connection. 

But then, peering at the blank square of the blog "new post", amidst these many words of ministry, I found myself experiencing a craving for silence.  During my sabbatical I had been visiting a deep silence, a silence that opened up the interior life, a silence that made room for an inner dialogue.  I had the incredible gift of time to wander into the depths of my soul and discover how vast is that terrain--and of course to realize that this inner world is expansive in each of us.  Now, every day I notice my yearning for that silence, and each morning I try to make time to enter it as deeply as I can--but often I am just opening the front door, and pausing in the vestibule.  And yet it is ever present, and illuminates the work of ministry with wings of mystery.  

Is there a bridge that can span the inner silence of one soul to the inner silence of another?  Can I bring my inner worlds into a larger web of communication, and if I could, what would be the purpose?  Is there something about the blog, in the vast hidden expanse of cyber space, that invites this silence to express itself?
And if silence can speak, might it have the capacity to open my ears, or your ears, to hear the sound of one hand clapping?