Silence is never empty.

Maybe finding ‘peace of mind’ begins by realizing that ‘peace’ will never begin in my ‘mind.’ And if I spend my life paying such a thought ‘no mind,’ never-mind finding ‘peace.

There’s something demanding about the stillness of the night; as if it knows our need for rest and demands that we have it. And if I impale the stillness with the incessant noise and raucous clamor of a mind ever ill at rest and in doing so I refuse to let the night bring what it does, the night will remain still but my soul will not.

I don’t need a rest from God. What I need is a rest from everything that is not God.

Sometimes in the thick quiet of those soft summer nights, I listen. For it is in the quiet that the voices of things deep and marvelous and adventurous whisper simply because a world of noise grants them no space. Therefore, if we have no quiet, we will hear plenty of noise, but we will not hear a single voice.

If the story of my life is about the storms that I have weathered, I will tell you that it is not the force of the storm that matters. What matters is that I had the privilege of the storm so that I might understand the power of the calm.