thresholds and silence: after Iona

How in the end to articulate that which is smaller and greater than words? Words, after all, are only raiding parties plundering the unspeakable

no way to find the voice

to tell of the sea's great roar of silence 

or of the blue behind the blue

and they're a kind of transitional mode, too; a threshold between the experience and time. ('Threshold' from Middle English 'threschen', the act of threshing, separating wheat grain from the chaffy husks.) 

So now, coming away from the Druids' Isle, Innis nan Druidhneach, from the way it scours me clean, from the deep stillness at the core of the wind, the waves, the seabirds' call; coming away from the people who join me each year with their openness and joys, their fears and doubts, their sense of inadequacy married to their great strengths, their kindness, their laughter and tears, their creativity – coming away, after a week of talking and writing, what is there left to say that the island couldn't say better?

our little paper boats of words

silence like a lifeboat

a lighthouse

the way our lives spill over

Driving 600 miles home in a welter of words. Driving 600 miles home in a great silence. 

All the time spring doing her thing at her own gentle pace, walking towards me. 

may those who are awake when wakefulness is needed

stay awake