{"id":6936,"date":"2021-04-12T07:43:26","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T14:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/?p=6936"},"modified":"2021-04-12T07:43:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T14:43:26","slug":"r-s-thomas-but-the-silence-in-the-mind-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/12\/r-s-thomas-but-the-silence-in-the-mind-3\/","title":{"rendered":"R. S. Thomas – But the silence in the mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

But the silence in the mind
\nby R. S. Thomas<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the silence in the mind
\nis when we live best, within
\nlistening distance of the silence
\nwe call God. This is the deep
\ncalling to deep of the psalm-
\nwriter, the bottomless ocean.
\nWe launch the armada of
\nour thoughts on, never arriving.<\/p>\n

It is a presence, then,
\nwhose margins are our margins;
\nthat calls us out over our
\nown fathoms. What to do
\nbut draw a little nearer to
\nsuch ubiquity by remaining still?<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a> \u2014 from For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics<\/a>, by Roger Housden<\/font><\/p>\n


\/ Image by MindSqueeZe<\/a> \/<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

A rare Monday poem email. Since it has been nearly a month since I last sent a Poetry Chaikhana email out, I decided not to wait until the end of the week. There are several reasons for the unannounced pause in the emails. <\/p>\n

I live outside of Boulder, Colorado and, as many of you are probably aware, there was a terrible shooting in Boulder a few weeks ago at a local grocery store. When my wife and I first moved to the area years ago, we lived within a few blocks of that store and often shopped for groceries there. We now live several miles away and were not in immediate danger during the shooting. But, of course, we still felt the trauma of the community, magnified by our own personal history with the scene of so much bloodshed. <\/p>\n

In the aftermath, I didn\u2019t want to immediately send out a poem. I wasn\u2019t quite ready to talk about the event, and it would have felt wrong to ignore it.<\/p>\n

Soon after, I had a birthday and Easter came up. And through it all, my day job has been especially busy.<\/p>\n

For all of those reasons I felt it was best to wait.<\/p>\n

But with spring blossoming in our area, it feels like it is now time to return to poetry and the reawakening of life. So I have a beautiful poem of silences for us today\u2026<\/p>\n

=<\/p>\n

But the silence in the mind
\nis when we live best\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t this poem delightful in its stillness? <\/p>\n

This is the deep
\ncalling to deep of the psalm-
\nwriter, the bottomless ocean.<\/i><\/p>\n

I particularly like the image of launching an armada of thoughts out on the bottomless ocean of silent mind. <\/p>\n

We launch the armada of
\nour thoughts on, never arriving.<\/i><\/p>\n

The silence is so vast that the thoughts can never arrive; they just fade into the misty distances. The image puts proper scale to our thoughts. They are small things with barely any substance amidst the great expanse we discover in silence.<\/p>\n

The silence is seen, then, not as a negation or emptiness, but as an overlooked, all-encompasing dimension of reality and being:<\/p>\n

It is a presence, then,
\nwhose margins are our margins<\/i><\/p>\n

And it is a challenge to us, a beckoning call\u2026<\/p>\n

that calls us out over our
\nown fathoms.<\/i><\/p>\n

I was a teenager in the 1980s, when the first personal computers started to become available. And, yes, I was one of those nerdy computer kids, spending hours in front of the computer screen, when I wasn\u2019t down at the neighborhood arcade feeding quarters into Pac Man and Space Invaders. It was a new medium, a new world built of light, different ways to display light, manipulate light, and finding meaning in that light. The mathematics, art, and movement of light were mesmerizing.<\/p>\n

But once the giddiness and sense of power wears off, you realize how restless that world is. The human mind, never much at ease in any historical period, now has endless promptings to remain entranced and agitated.<\/p>\n

I went through a period when I rejected computers along with as many other elements of modern technology as I could. I desperately wanted to find out what it meant to live in the essential state of being human. What did it mean to be human 500 years ago? 5,000 years ago? What is the essential human experience of life and self-awareness?<\/p>\n

I began to seek remote places in nature, where I could meditate and fast.<\/p>\n

I wanted to discover that \u201csilence in the mind\u201d that brings us\u2013<\/p>\n

\u2026within
\nlistening distance of the silence
\nwe call God.<\/i><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong\u2013 I\u2019m a modern person, a product of the modern era. I would greatly resent being thrust back into some previous era. I don\u2019t take the freedoms and possibilities of my modern life for granted.<\/p>\n

But we so miss having a place in society for silence. We are given very little encouragement to cultivate stillness. More than ever we must fight to create the space for silence in our lives. I feel great love and respect for all you misfits and spiritual revolutionaries out there quietly holding ajar the doorways to silence. You are the hope of the world. <\/p>\n

What to do
\nbut draw a little nearer\u2026?<\/i><\/p>\n

\u2026All this, typed on a computer, sent out over the Internet. (Ivan, still trying to find ways to make light move, yet in ways that inspire peace.)<\/p>\n


\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a>Recommended Books: R. S. Thomas<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nSoul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nR. S. Thomas: Selected Poems<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nR. S. Thomas (Everyman Poetry)<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nR. S. Thomas: Collected Poems 1945-1990<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
More Books >><\/a><\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\n<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\"R.<\/a>\n<\/td>\n\nR. S. Thomas<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Wales (1913 \u2013 2000) Timeline<\/a>
\nChristian<\/a><\/a>
\n<\/a><\/a><\/em>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

The son of a sailor, Thomas led an unsettled life in early childhood, moving with his family from port town to port town.<\/p>\n

As an adult, R. S. Thomas became an Anglican priest, serving rural Welsh farming communities.<\/p>\n

Thomas dabbled in poetry in school, but it wasn\u2019t until he met the painter Mildred E. Eldridge, the woman who would become his wife, that be began to take poetry seriously.<\/p>\n

More poetry by R. S. Thomas<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But the silence in the mind by R. S. Thomas But the silence in the mind is when we live best, within listening distance of the silence we call God. This is the deep calling to deep of the psalm- writer, the bottomless ocean. We launch the armada of our thoughts on, never arriving. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,3],"tags":[2407,991,932,700,1932],"class_list":["post-6936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ivans-story","category-poetry","tag-boulder-shooting","tag-prayer","tag-r-s-thomas","tag-silence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6937,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6936\/revisions\/6937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}