Let us seek the quiet and the calm Let us lay aside our loud calling Let us lay aside our struggle Speak softly: let us listen to the melodies that recall other proportions Our moments tarry not with us Let us then seek the dimension that endures beyond all nowness and hereness beyond all...

Let there be joy in our coming together this morning. Let there be truth heard in the words we speak and the songs we sing. Let there be help and healing for our disharmony and despair. Let there be silence for the voice within us and beyond us. Let there be joy in our coming together.

We are bogged down by the details of life. We are smothered by detail. Our bodies fill up with knots of anxiety. Our throats are dry. We would weep, but our eyes have no tears. We could cry out, but we have no passion. Who has done this to us? We confess the pain we cause ourselves....

Out of wood and stone, out of dream and sacrifice, the people build a home. Out of the work of their hands and hearts and minds, the people fashion a symbol and a reality. May this house be truly a place of meeting: meeting in warmth and joy and openness; meeting in courage and love and trust....

Let us join our hearts and minds in the quiet of meditation and prayer. How shall we pray? First, let us be open to the silence. Let us hear the sounds in this room, the noises outside, and the comfortable murmur from the children downstairs. Let us begin to hear the soft beating of our hearts....

Giver of being and freedom, thou who touches our lives in unforeseen ways, who unsettles our ease and upsets our self-satisfactions: We wait in these moments of stillness to let the hidden processes of healing and growth do their silent work within us, and to let the quiet work of reconciliation ...

Quiet yourself and listen to the rhythm of your breath, your heart . . .Listen to the silence . . .

Let us take a moment to settle into the silence. Hear and feel your quiet breathing. Hear and feel the quiet of this room and this community of quiet people. As we sit in the quiet, feel the life that stretches between us, that fills this room....

In the moments when Word is silence give yourself to it in wholeness and wait. Let the knowing of this primal sound carry you into circles where sound itself— where silence itself—becomes new and the new a song you sing from your bones.