Sitting where I usually sit to do a certain meditation every now and then, I spied two cardinals out the back window on a slanted beam of the deck.  They seemed to be playfully with one another, one of them seemingly feeding or pecking into the mouth of the other.

Standing up to confirm whether it was a couple, as in mating or mated birds, I did indeed see the colored male cardinal, and the more neutral-colored female cardinal.

In this meditation, I always hope to, and usually do in some way, uncover that sense of connection to what I believe in about life, what I know of it, a spirit of life that nourishes, contains a true peace, feels full of possibility, and has an exchange of love with me in all of these areas.

I did begin to feel this just as the two cardinals alighted on the beam.

I thought this fitting, as I confirmed it was a playful couple, and was smiling as I intuited a sense about this: whenever we are just relaxed and enjoying our connection to life, feeling a love about it, this is not unlike a subtle but present feeling of a give-and-take, a subtle exchange between the universe and ourselves, between life and who we are.

Everything became or was all right in those moments.

That is what I hope from the meditation each time.

That is what I hope for you, for each of us.

We can find our moments of relaxed peace and love.

As summer starts heading into fall, maybe we can start to thoughtfully set some time aside to allow these moments to happen.

As winter approaches, it may feel good to stretch into this time of year, lean into it, feel its quietness, solitude, and peacefulness, such peace.

I encourage you to find solace in the silence, make that happen for yourself this time of year.

I am including many inspirational quotations about silence below.

Peace, mj

--

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.
~William Penn

Silence is the true friend that never betrays.
~Confucius

An inability to stay quiet is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
~Walter Bagehot

Silence is a source of great strength.
~Lao Tzu

Silence is the universal refuge....
~Henry David Thoreau

Accustomed to the veneer of noise ... society is suspicious of those who value silence.
~John Lahr

I have often lamented that we cannot close our ears with as much ease as we can our eyes.
~Richard Steele

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
~Mahatma Gandhi

Silence is a fence around wisdom.
~German Proverb

Silence is as deep as eternity; speech, shallow as time.
~Thomas Carlyle

Silence is medication for sorrow.
~Arab Proverb

Silence was never written down.
~Italian Proverb

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.
~Edward Hoagland

Nature and silence go better together.
~Astrid Alauda

You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind.
~Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
~Peter Minard

Silence is more musical than any song.
~Christina Rossetti

Nothing is more useful than silence.
~Menander of Athens

Silence is a sounding thing, to one who listens hungrily.
~Gwendolyn Bennett

Silence is the mother of truth.
~Benjamin Disraeli

Her hearing was keener than his, and she heard silences he was unaware of.
~D.M. Thomas

We must have reasons for speech but we need none for silence.
~Proverb

Silence is the secret to sanity.
~Astrid Alauda

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.
~Leroy Brownlow

Silences make the real conversations between friends.  Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.
~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson