Everything is Going to Be Okay

...and other insights from the Great Silence of the road

“Our awareness of God is a syntax of the silence in which souls mingle with the divine, in which the ineffable in us communes with the ineffable beyond us.” — Abraham Heschel

Sometimes on the road, my thoughts slip away into stillness. The constant noise of my mind, like the churning of the sea, turns to glass, and everything — the howl of the wind around the van, the drone of the rubber as it tears at the pavement, the thunder of the occasional car that passes me by — fades into the background. 

I find in those moments a silence that I can only describe as holy. I experience it not merely as the absence of noise or thought, but as the presence of something larger than myself. Of Someone, for it pervades me with a sentience I cannot escape. I sense it everywhere, in everything. I am suddenly adrift in the reverie of a Great Silence more vast than my mind can conceive, and more sacred than any religion on earth can create.

Within this silence, when I look at the trees, I find that they are looking back, as curious about me as I am about them. The grasses and lakes, the hilltops and rivers, the canopy of sky scattered with clouds, all take on a vibrant immediacy. The distance between things evaporates. Everything becomes one thing in the Great Silence that binds us.

In those moments, something deep inside me rises to the surface. It is a part of me I cannot name. Perhaps it cannot be named. But I can tell you this: This deep part of me, this nameless spirit that is somehow the truest part of whatever I am, it is not worried about any of the craziness happening in the world right now. It is not the least bit afraid. It feels this incredibly deep connection with everyone and everything else, and with the Great Silence that binds us all together, and it trusts in that. It rests in it. It knows that everything is going to be okay. 

And that is a comforting thought.