This month's host, Jone, shared this quote with us from Thomas Merton: "The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living."
My life has a lot more silence in it than a few years ago, when we were a busy household. Now it's just my husband and me, and right now he's out on a bike ride as, in silence, I contemplate the idea of silence. There's a fan going in the room where I am, but other than that, there's very little sound.
It's exam week, so it was a quiet day overall at school. Most days aren't like that, but today was. It's the calm before the storm. There are concerts coming up, and the Drama Club is performing, and Project-Based Learning, and lots of end of semester noise. But it's good to get a little break from that, to spend the day writing report card comments and grading exams, like I did today.
This Advent song, with lyrics from the 5th century, imagines a moment of silence as Jesus descends to earth. But like my quiet day, it's a brief moment, because the song ends with the whole heavenly host singing, "Alleluia, alleluia!"
