It turned out that 15 ladies came, and fit nicely into the sitting room which my co-planner said was the nicest, coziest sitting room in Ireland. =) I felt sorry for the few who sat on hard surfaces, but it could hardly be helped.

I’d been asked to give ‘The Gift of Story’ talk that I gave at the Oasis Ladies’ Retreat at SMBI in Aug. I discovered that it’s much scarier to talk to women who know me than to speak to strangers. I teach the ladies’ Sunday school class; I don’t know why this talk was different and more intimidating than that is every Sunday, but it was.

However, talking to women who know me is more productive than talking to strangers, because my friends constructively point out the broad, sweeping generalities I’m prone to make, and they challenge my various ideas, and get me to hone this or that point. Very, very good. Strangers just smile and say thanks, and make you feel like you said something profound and encouraging. But they don’t point out what you should have clarified, or question what you said.

And afterwards, after most had left, some of us stood around the food table, nibbling the leftovers, in fun, girlish camaraderie.
It was a fun night. And next time, I get to critique what’s said!!!!

This post is supposed to make my readers think that I live a charmed life. Because I do! I don’t write fiction–not yet. This story is true.

Last night I made a Spanish omelet after I came home from work. The phone rang as I was eating dinner on the back steps in the setting sunlight. “Are you having a bridge of silence?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m sitting on the step, eating and chatting with my house mate and listening to choral music.”

Then we talked to catch up with each others’ news, and then I had to hang up because another friend was walking through the door. She and I drank several cups of tea and talked and laughed, and then, because she’s a far better wordsmith than I, she helped me draft a letter that I was needing help with and had asked for her assistance.

Minutes after she took herself away, the phone rang again, and it was another friend whom I haven’t seen for far too long, so we chatted awhile, and arranged to meet for dinner one night next week.

It was after 10 when we hung up, and when I looked at the clock, I felt this excited, relaxed thrill that comes after having had a most sociable, chatty, interactive evening. It refreshed and energized me as little else does. My housemate is moving to Dublin on Monday and while I am not excited about living alone, this evening helped me fear it less.

In 30 min. another friend is coming to finalize plans for our church women’s fellowship evening that I’m helping to host and share at, this coming Saturday night. I hope she can help me move some furniture so that we can put 19 ladies in the sitting room. I suspect one is as lonely as one lets herself be, and as long as I have a phone and friends and family nearby, I will never become a hermitess. For this I am grateful and relieved.

Being with people usually energizes me. Observing and interacting with people makes my world bigger and more exciting and I love it. I love people and communication.

Maybe it’s part of maturing, but as I become more self-aware, I’m learning that I need silent spaces that link between the intense, noisy, crowded, fun hubub of people. The bridge of silence gives me a place to regroup, assess where I’ve been, and where I’m going. It is, as a friend says, a time for my soul to catch up with my body.

The bridge of silence is an active place, not lethargic or lazy. But it is silent. And in a different way than the crowd, it energizes me again. Sometimes I have 20 min. on the bridge. Sometimes I have half a day to spend on it. Solitude and silence is a spiritual discipline that saints have practiced for centuries. I treat is as a luxury, but I might be more saintly if I kept it as a discipline.

These days, when seemingly endless lines of customers and chit chat fill my hours, I desperately need silent bridges to connect the days and keep me from falling off the peaks. Which is where I’m going now.

Let us be silent, so we may hear the voice of God.

Felt a soul-deep exhaustion most of the day. Since I didn’t have to go to work until 1:00, I used the morning as a bridge of silence between 2 chasms of noise and action. It was good to be quiet, to talk to God, to hear Him speak. Amazing, that the God whose voice thunders like the ocean also speaks in stillness.