In prayer the stilled voice learns to hold its peace,
to listen with the heart to silence that is joy, is
adoration. The self is shattered, all words torn apart
in this strange patterned time of contemplation that,
in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me, and then,
in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
Grandfather says this: in life there is sadness as well as joy, losing as well as winning, falling as well as
standing. I do not say this to make you despair, but to teach you that life is a journey sometimes walked
in light and sometimes walked in shadow.
~ from KEEP GOING by Joseph M. Marshall III