Tag: silence

Temple Ruins

By Donald S. Yarab

Nabataean temple ruins at Khirbet et-Tannur, Jordan. The temple may have been dedicated to the goddess Atargatis (see McKenzie et al. 2002; Almasri 2019).

When the Rains Come

When the rains come … the dust shall become mud,
When the rains come … the mud shall become mire,
And the feet of the proud shall sink to the ankle,
And their words shall cling like clay to their tongues.

When the rains come … the roofs shall tremble,
The cisterns shall overflow their stone mouths,
And the low places shall remember the sea,
Calling out to the deep from which they were torn.

When the rains come … the idols shall dim,
Their painted eyes veiled in silt and silence,
And the temples shall weep through broken eaves,
For their gods shall not answer from the thunder.

When the rains come … the earth shall be heavy,
And the hearts of men heavier still;
The widow shall draw her shawl to her face,
And the child shall forget the taste of dry bread.

When the rains come … we shall huddle together,
Beholding the waters erase our names from the doorposts,
And none shall boast of his harvest,
For the river shall take what it wills,
Bearing all things toward the forgetting sea.

When the Sun Is Restored

When the sun is restored … the waters shall fade,
When the sun is restored … the mire shall break and sigh,
And the earth shall stir beneath the plough,
Breathing again as if reborn.

When the sun is restored … warmth shall come first,
A balm to the chilled and the shivering earth;
Green shall rise from the broken furrows,
And the people shall bless the light.

When the sun is restored … the fields shall swell,
The ears grow heavy, the vines bend low;
And laughter shall echo in the threshing floor,
Till the grain lies fuller than the granaries can hold.

  And in the noonday brightness the sparrows fell silent,
  For they knew the hour would not endure.

When the sun is restored … the rivers shall dwindle,
The soil yawn open like a parched mouth,
And famine shall creep from the roots of plenty,
Taking the firstborn of abundance.

When the sun is restored … the hearts of men shall fail,
Their tongues cleaving to the roofs of their mouths;
And the widow shall weep no longer,
For her tears have been taken by the wind.

When the sun is restored … we shall gather at the well,
Staring into its empty throat,
And all shall return to dust,
For from dust were we raised, and to dust we descend;
And we lift parched hands, as if exalting to heaven for rain,
That the circle may begin again.

When the Silence Falls

When the silence falls … the people shall gather,
Not in joy nor mourning, but in stillness;
And the priests shall stand before the altar,
Their hands empty of offerings.

When the silence falls … the incense shall not rise,
For no prayer shall remain upon our lips;
We have cried out in the rains and cursed in the drought,
And now we have no words to give.

When the silence falls … the children shall ask,
“Why do we come to this place?”
And the elders shall have no answer,
For the stones themselves have forgotten their purpose.

When the silence falls … the priests shall look upon each other,
And see their own faces as through water;
They shall remember the prayers they learned as boys,
And wonder if the words were ever heard.

When the silence falls … we shall see what we have built—
Altars worn smooth by our hands,
Bowls that held grain and oil and blood,
All the bargaining of our fathers with the sky.

When the silence falls … no voice shall descend,
Neither blessing nor judgment from above;
And we shall know that we stand alone,
Between the rain we fear and the sun we cannot bear,
Waiting in the house we made for a goddess
Who has not spoken in living memory.

Between Astonishment and Silence

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” Psalm 8:3-4

The Psalmist, gazing beneath the vault of stars, marvels aloud:
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
The heavens dwarf him, the dust clings to him,
yet he dares believe the Maker bends low, remembers, and grants worth.

But even in that astonishment, the shadow of doubt stirs.
Another voice—the Philosopher’s—finds in the same expanse not remembrance but silence.
The stars speak only of distance,
the void carries no voice.
Armenia and Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Rwanda, Ukraine and Gaza—
the graves of countless innocents cry out:
how can one still say, Thou art mindful?
Likewise, science has stripped the heavens bare:
no angels in the spheres, only galaxies colliding in indifferent law.
Scripture, once oracle, is now artifact, sifted by history.
Thus the question sharpens: not What is man, that Thou art mindful?
but Is Thou mindful at all?

Between astonishment and silence stands the Poet, unable to forsake either.
He reveres the psalm, yet trembles with the Philosopher’s doubt.
Inheritance falters: the words remain precious,
but their certainty slips from them.
Still, he will not cast them aside.
Instead, he holds the fragments as one might hold a candle in the wind:
not enough to illumine the void,
yet enough to keep the darkness from being complete.
He labors to shape language into vigil,
to bind meaning against the scatter of grief,
to weave remembrance into flame so silence is not the final word.

Perhaps mindfulness is only man’s work—
to remember, to wrest coherence from the scatter of loss.
Or perhaps it is more: a presence that waits rather than speaks,
a silence that shelters rather than denies.
The Poet does not resolve the question;
he learns instead to live within it,
to practice reverence without assurance,
until the asking itself becomes our mindfulness.

Confessio: The Half-Remembered

A Liturgy for Those Who Have Forgotten the Words

Confessional
Photo by Arina Krasnikova on Pexels.com

Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned,
It has been… we cannot count the years—
since we knew what sin meant.

We mouth the words the nuns and priests once taught us,
but the syllables taste foreign now,
like prayers in a dead language
we pretend to understand.

We have forgotten why we kneel,
though still our knees recall the stone.
We have lost the thread of what was broken,
but feel the weight of something severed.

We built cathedrals out of doubt
and filled them with our questions.
We replaced altars with algorithms,
confession with comment sections.

We are no longer sure You are listening—
or if listening is something we invented
to make the silence bearable,
the vastness less vacant.

We have sinned—we think—
though we are not sure against what.
Against nature? Against each other?
Against some half-remembered covenant,
written in a script we can no longer read?

We recite the forms like actors
who have forgotten their motivation,
performing the ancient motions
because they feel like muscle memory—
like DNA calling us home
to a house we are no longer certain exists.

Still we gather, still we whisper
these inherited incantations,
hoping they might still hold power,
hoping the words might remember
what we have forgotten.

O my God… we are… we think we are…
sorry… for having… for having what?
For having forgotten how to finish this prayer?

Silence as Falling

By Donald S. Yarab

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή

“The way up and the way down are one and the same.”
—Heraclitus, Fragment 60 (Diels–Kranz); cf. Fragment 69 (Kirk & Raven)

When the mind enclosed reels, the frame gives way—
No border left to mark the night from day.
No cry, no anchor, only this descent
Where meaning bleeds and thought is all but spent.

It is not drift, but failure to remain—
The loosening of self from shape, from name.
It does not seek, nor struggle, nor insist—
It simply ceases, lost beyond all reach.

No wind attends, no witness marks the trace,
No voice declares the vanishing of place.
The silence is not peace, but what survives
When all the scaffolds break, and none revives.

No hand to hold, no vow left to defend—
One thought still clings—then breaks before the bend.
Just falling, falling, not to sky or land,
But into being none can understand.

Victoire de Samothrace – Musee du Louvre

Ode to the Deep

Photo by Sebastian Voortman on Pexels.com

I. Stillness Before the Descent
What stirs in silence but the thought of falling?
The soul leans forward at the edge of time,
Where earth gives way to rhythm without measure—
No firmament beneath, no axis left to climb.
The wind is absent here. The light, unsure.
All motion trembles on the breath of stillness.
We speak of peace, yet dread the calmest shore—
For we have built our gods from fear and witness.

II. The Water Below
Not storm, not wave, nor tempest’s hissing swell,
But quiet depth—the fathomless unknown,
Uncoiling silence from a buried bell
Where light has never touched the sea-worn stone.
Here dwell no monsters, save the mind’s own eye.
The fear is not of drowning, but of seeing—
That which reflects not sky, but self, and why
The soul recoils from naked being.

III. The Humbling
The sea does not instruct with word or wind—
It shapes the soul by salt and slow erosion.
A kneeling cliff, worn smooth where waves have pinned
Each boast to sand, each name to dark devotion.
The deeper still you go, the less you hold—
No torch remains, no doctrine, no command.
The deep forgives, but never does it fold—
It presses wonder into trembling hand.

IV. What Remains
So is the fear a gift, once held aright—
A trembling compass on the soul’s long chart.
For he who feared the deep, yet dared its night,
Returns not wise—but hollowed, whole of heart.
He cannot speak of what he saw below,
Only that silence taught him how to kneel.
And those who know will know. The rest may go
To read their truths upon a turning wheel.