Sharing silence

Last night I pulled myself away from my paper-piles to go to the Cambridge Zen Center. It’s been too long since I’ve been to Tuesday evening practice at the Zen Center, as the demands of a busier-than-usual semester have interfered with my best intentions. Although I’m still buried in end-term grading, last night I wanted to take a break from grading a seemingly endless supply of student papers (words piled atop more words) in order to share silence with old friends. It was a break I sorely needed.

In the aftermath of last week’s school shootings in Connecticut, there has been a lot of talk online, in the news, and elsewhere about important things: talk about grief and healing, talk about guns and violence, talk about mental illness and bullying. All of these are worthwhile topics that deserve thoughtful and ongoing conversation, but after a certain point, even these issues can become words piled atop more words.

As I was driving to the Zen Center last night, I felt overfull with words and ready simply to sit with sadness: my sadness, the city of Newtown’s sadness, and the sadness of the whole suffering, sentient world. There’s nothing words can do to explain or erase sadness: sometimes all you can do with your own or someone else’s heartache is sit and share silence with it, giving it a warm lap to curl up on, quiet, while it lulls itself to sleep.