Silent
Silent provides the tools for seekers to recognize their path and enables self-reliance for spiritual and magickal growth.
Seekers gain insight from his work and find their inner calm from his ability to listen and help others reflect.
Illuminated Silence
Silent • September 9, 2024
Contemplative Reflections through Lectio Divina
Lectio Divina, meaning "Divine Reading," is a traditional Benedictine practice of scriptural reading, meditation, and prayer.
Traditionally it was intended to promote communion with the Christian God and to increase the knowledge of the divine word.
It is a systematic approach to spiritual reading and contemplation practiced by many faiths seeking a deeper, more personal connection with the divine.
These divine readings are my Pagan take on the contemplation of topics important to all people.
Lectio Divina is a transformative practice that invites you to engage with thoughtful readings profoundly and intimately. By listening to your inner wisdom, you open yourself to spiritual growth, allowing the words to speak directly into your life.
Lectio Divina offers a pathway to a more profound, more personal relationship with the universe, whether practiced daily or periodically.
Four Steps of Lectio Divina
Lectio (Reading):
Begin by selecting a topic and a passage. Each reading is at most two pages.
Read the passage slowly and attentively, allowing the words to sink in. Listen to the text as though it were being spoken directly to you, noticing any words or phrases that stand out. You can read them anywhere and at any time.
The words will resonate with you differently at different times in your life. Ground and center yourself before reading. Establish a practice of tuning out the world and creating a bubble around you.
It's helpful to read the passage multiple times, letting its meaning become more profound with each reading.
Meditatio (Meditation):
Reflect on the words or phrases that stood out during the reading. Consider what they mean to you, how they speak to your life, and what the divine might communicate through them.
Meditation in this context is not about emptying the mind but filling it with the message from the divine. Allow your thoughts to dwell on the spiritual significance of the text.
This time for deep reflection allows the text to resonate in your heart and mind.
Oratio (Prayer):
Respond to the passage with prayer. This can be a conversation with your Patron, an ancestor, a tree, the universe, or other spiritual forces about what you have read and meditated upon, expressing gratitude, seeking guidance, asking questions, or simply resting in Stillness.
Prayer during Lectio Divina is personal and spontaneous. It is a dialogue where you bring your reflections and feelings.
Contemplatio (Contemplation):
Enter into a time of quiet contemplation, resting in the Stillness. This step moves beyond words, thoughts, and images into a silent, loving focus on the divine.
Contemplation is about being with spirit, simply enjoying the divine presence without the need for active thinking or verbal prayer.
It’s a time of peace and stillness, where you allow the universe to work within you.
How to read each Lectio Divina
Each reading has text for contemplation. Following each are meditation, contemplation, reflection, and silent sitting suggestions. They are suggestions; use them as you are moving or develop your own.
You will find a rhythm that works for you as you develop your practice.
Illuminated Silence is my third book. It bears the inscription.
𒍣𒋛 𒈬𒊭𒉌𒋛
"Zee-shoo moo-shah-nee-shoom"
(May it nourish your soul)
In the Stillness
In the depths of night, when all is silent,
I drift into the space between breath and thought,
Where the world falls away, and I am alone
Yet surrounded by the eternal presence.
Here, in the Stillness, where shadows hold no fear, I find the pulse of the universe,
A rhythm older than time, more constant than the stars,
Beating in the void, a heartbeat within my own.
This is the place where all paths converge,
A plane beyond planes, where dark matter swirls
Not as chaos, but as the very fabric of existence,
The unseen, the unfelt, holding us all in its embrace.
I listen, not with ears but with the soul,
And in that deep, sacred silence,
The mysteries whisper truths older than creation,
Echoes of a time before time, carried on the still wind.
The Stillness is both my journey and my destination,
A place where the self dissolves into the All,
Where the boundaries of flesh and bone fade,
And I become the void, the space between spaces.
In this contemplative dance, I am both seeker and found,
Wandering through the infinite, anchored in the unseen.
The Stillness breathes with me, through me,
A communion of spirit and shadow, light and dark.
I return to the world, not as I was,
But marked by the Stillness,
A part of me forever dwelling there,
In that quiet, holy place where all things are possible.
Meditation:
Find a place where the world cannot reach you. Close your eyes and breathe deeply, entering the space between breaths. Allow the boundaries of your mind to dissolve, leaving only the Stillness. Feel the universe's rhythm within you, a heartbeat that has always been there, waiting to be heard. As you breathe, let the Stillness expand, filling every corner of your being.
Reflection:
What does it mean to find the universe's pulse within the Stillness?
How do the shadows transform when seen through the lens of the soul?
What do you discover about your journey in the convergence of all paths?
When the self dissolves into the All, who remains?
Reflect on the paradox of seeking and finding within the same breath and space.
Prayer:
Eternal presence guides me into the depths of Stillness.
May I hear the ancient whispers that speak of truths beyond time.
Let my being dissolve into the All, finding peace in the void.
May the Stillness be my anchor and my guide,
As I journey through the spaces within spaces,
Forever marked by the quiet of the sacred.
Contemplation:
Sit with the Stillness as both journey and destination. What does it mean to be both seeker and found, to wander the infinite while being anchored in the unseen?
Contemplate the merging of spirit and shadow, light and dark, and how this communion shapes your understanding of existence. Consider how the Stillness transforms you, marking you forever as you return to the world.
Silent Sitting:
Close the book. Close your eyes. Let the words fall away, leaving only the Stillness. Sit in the quiet, allowing the boundaries of flesh and bone to fade. Breathe with the Stillness, through the Stillness, and let it breathe through you. In this silence, let the mysteries unfold without expectation. Simply be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Walk into any forest in the Cascades and you are standing on the dead. The fir that fell forty years ago is now the nurse log feeding a row of saplings. The salmon carried uphill by an eagle became the nitrogen in the cedar's needles. Nothing in that forest is wasted, and nothing in it is afraid. We have built an entire industry on pretending we are exempt from this. We drain the body of its blood, fill it with preservatives, seal it in lacquered hardwood, and lower it into a concrete vault—as if the earth were a contamination to be defended against rather than the place we came from. Cremation, for all its simplicity, burns fossil fuel and sends the body skyward as carbon. There is another way, and it began here in Washington. Human composting—the law calls it natural organic reduction—was legalized in this state in 2019, the first in the nation. The process is unhurried and honest. The body, unembalmed, is laid into a steel vessel and surrounded by wood chips, alfalfa, and straw. No chemicals are added. The microbes that already live on the plant material, and on us, do the work they have always done. Over eight to twelve weeks, the body becomes soil—about a cubic yard of it, dark and alive. Families may take some home for a garden or a tree, or donate it to forest conservation land. What was a person becomes, quite literally, ground for new growth. I have sat with the dying, and I can tell you that the question underneath most deathbed fear is not what happens to me? It is did I matter, and will anything of me remain? The Hávamál answers plainly: cattle die, kin die, the self dies too—but what one leaves behind endures. We usually read that as reputation. I have come to read it more literally. A body that becomes soil leaves something behind that you can hold in your hands. Something that feeds. For those of us who keep the old ways, this is not innovation. It is restoration. Our ancestors were returned to barrows and bogs and burial mounds, given back to the land that fed them. The vessel and the alfalfa are new; the covenant is ancient. The earth gives, and the earth receives. Every harvest festival we keep is built on that exchange. It would be strange to honor the cycle all our lives and then opt out of it at the end. This choice is now legal in a dozen states and counting. If it speaks to you, say so—out loud, in writing, to the people who will one day carry out your wishes. Death plans left unspoken become burdens; death plans spoken become gifts. A leaf falls. A seed sprouts. The tree does not grieve the leaf, and the soil does not refuse the seed. When my own time comes, I intend to be useful one last time. That, too, is a kind of prayer. —Silent
For the Pagan and Contemplative Community
There is a grief that arrives before the death. It does not announce itself. It does not have a name that anyone uses at the dinner table, or in the waiting room, or in the parking lot of the care facility where you sit in your car for a few minutes before going in, gathering yourself. It lives in small moments. The first time they didn't recognize you. The day you realized you were making decisions for them that they would have hated. The night you caught yourself hoping — just for a second, just once — that it would be over soon, and then spent the next three days punishing yourself for the thought. This is called anticipatory grief. And it is real, and it is heavy, and almost no one will name it for you while you are living inside it, because you are the strong one, and the person you are losing is still here, and grief, we have been told, comes after. It doesn't always come after. Sometimes it comes alongside. Caregiving is one of the most demanding things a human being can do. It asks you to be present to someone else's diminishment, day after day, while managing your own fear and your own exhaustion and your own sadness — and while the world around you continues as though nothing unusual is happening. You go to the grocery store. You answer emails. You show up. You are praised for your strength, which is a kindness people offer because they don't know what else to give you. What you actually need is someone who will let you put the strength down for an hour. Not fix you. Not give you a plan. Not tell you that you're doing a great job, or that they couldn't do what you're doing, or that everything happens for a reason. Just someone who will sit with you in the weight of it. Who will not be frightened by what you are carrying. Who will let you say the unsayable things — the anger, the ambivalence, the love that is so tangled up with loss that you can no longer tell them apart. That is what I offer. I am a death doula and spiritual director. I work with caregivers who are in the middle of it — not at the end, not after, but now, in the long middle stretch where the grief has no official start date and the world has not yet given you permission to feel it. We meet, usually by video, for an hour at a time. I listen in a particular way — not for problems to solve, but for what is actually present beneath the exhaustion and the competence and the careful management of everyone else's emotions. You do not have to have it together when you come into this space. That is the point of it. A few things I will not do: I will not tell you how to grieve correctly. There is no correctly. I will not rush you toward acceptance or silver linings. Some things do not have silver linings, and pretending otherwise is a small violence. I will not give you more to manage. You are already managing too much. What I will do is be present — fully, unhurriedly, without an agenda — for whatever you bring into the room. If you are a caregiver and you are reading this and something in you recognized itself in these words, that recognition is an invitation. I have a small number of spaces available for caregivers who are navigating the approach of death alongside someone they love. The intake questions at tokeepsilent.me are where we begin. Or you can reach me directly. There is no script for this conversation. We simply start. — Silent