SILENCE, SUFFICIENT TO EXPLAIN A HEART

«Un silence, voilà qui est suffisant pour expliquer un coeur.»

Deux Jeunes Amoureux

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin dit Moliere.

Early morning in the Alps of southern France.  A strange thing happened to us this evening.  We were in a meeting preparing for the end of January event where we have people from different walks of life come to make life enriching presentations to our church goers.  This evening was a moment when we had representatives from the two major language groups present, English and Spanish.  We were reviewing where we had arrived in our planning process to date.  I was taking suggestions from everyone for topics to be considered.  Many floated across the table and the evening was approaching its final moments.  That's when it happened.  Someone said, "What about <Sacred Silence?>  If you ever saw unanimity hit a group in what some may have called a "New York split second", you know what I mean when I say that.  It was like a lightening bolt.  It was a serious meeting so not a single soul thought of making the obvious bad joke about, "Yeah, so we encourage someone to TALK for 90 minutes about silence!"  Not even I wanted to dare that one.  So I wrote it down in my note book and let my mind absorb it.  We went on to lighter things, started to bid one another a good night and slowly found our way to the door.  But it still kept swirling around in my head.  On the way home I found my mind coming to rest where it often does in these moments...right in the Moliere sand-box, so to speak.  When I want to let my mind run free and take a nice refreshing swim in the ocean of challenging thoughts, I dive into the Moliere Ocean.  He is a 17th century poet and playwright who is most famous for his classical comedies and farces. He found a way to say so many deep truths in such subtle ways that I find myself floating on clouds when I get to dealing with his turn of phrase and piercing vision.  For those two love-birds,  it was early in the morning and the sun was just making his last efforts to make it over the shoulder of the mountain to the east of where we were standing, close and in silent meditation and communication with one another and with the Creator.  In the direction that we were facing was the mountain peak that had claimed 55 Canadians 50 years earlier.  At the moment when my French Friend, Pierrot, yeah I know, ["mon ami Pierrot, prete - moi ta plume"], anyway, Pierrot snapped a couple of very sentimental shots and actually named the electronic files with the caption that I have put below the photo that you see here.  This is a moment of silence during which  two hearts were communicating without needing any noisy help.  So how do you give a 90 minute talk about this?  I am not about to be the one to try, bet on it.
So tonight, the one string of words that came to mind, picture and all, was the one that I translated for you as the title for this article.
I am not going to belabor the point.  I can end this moment of seriousness by saying that 40 years ago I would have known [intellectually] that "Silence is sufficient to explain a heart" is true.  I am profoundly happy that now I am head-to-toe, inside and out, intellectually and emotionally positive that it is true.