Silence

Silence is Golden, but my eyes don't see...yes, I understand now. Today I taught a Diva Dance class for a group of women for whom English is a second language. I have taught this class before, with verbal cues and the difference between the two ways of teaching were astounding. I have been to foreign lands, in fact I spent many a summer in Italy where I indulged in muteness due to the language barrier. While my sisters learned and spoke and communicated in Italian, I stubbornly clung to my fear of making mistakes and being corrected, at least at first. I quickly learned that my silence had a certain power to it and I was not lacking in company, in friendship, in relationship. In my home land, I speak my mother tongue, that is to say I speak English. I have relied heavily on my verbal skills to communicate, and while words are handy dandy (I am after all, using them now), signs and symbols, facial expressions and eyes, hands and intention speak so much more clearly and commandingly. I had no intention of teaching wordlessly today, it just happened. The few times I used words they felt heavy, misplaced, like a tumbling rock disturbing a peaceful and vibrant landscape of sublte aliveness. Without words, I felt the dancers, watched them learning and capturing new ways of moving and expressing. They knew what I was saying with my heart, my body, my hope for them and in return, I received their happy wonder, joy filling me with appreciation for the relating. To be alive, in communion with another, it is beyond words, and I am filled up with this knowing. Silence does not mean nothing is being said, it is a gift to the eyes that see, the ears that hear and the heart that gives and receives.