Silence is essential.
We need silence just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. Silence is a kind of light, the light of the spirit. If in our daily lives we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise
The ocean refuses no river. It accepts all comers, and in time, even the muddiest waters clear.
This is the work of stillness: to let everything settle until only what is essential remains.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Darkness deserves gratitude.
It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand
that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.
Joan Chittister
The Winter Solstice
Life does not move in a straight line, but unfolds in cycles. Pauses, setbacks, and returns are not failures; they are necessary phases of renewal. Day returns to night, growth returns to rest, activity settles back into stillness.
Returning is the motion of the Tao
Tao Te Ching, 40
But beyond self-care and the ability to (really) listen, the practice of doing nothing has something broader to offer us: an antidote to the rhetoric of growth.
In the context of health and ecology, things that grow unchecked are often considered parasitic or cancerous.
Yet we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative.
Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing
When we recognize that spring and summer always lead to autumn and winter, in our own lives we will perhaps resist the times of releasing and resting that come to us. Winter invites me to rest and contemplation, to making time for quiet walks in the few hours of light.
The God of winter invites me into a healing rhythm of rest and renewal, of deep listening in the midst of stillness, of trusting the seeds sprouting deep within that have been planted.
Christine Valters Paintner
Mindfulbalance 