“In the bush, knee-deep in snow, laying tobacco down and offering prayers of thankfulness for the life of my mother, I became aware of silence. It was full and rich and tangible: I could almost reach out and touch it. I smiled then. Smiled because it becomes so simple when you surrender grief to the ongoing act of living, to being to becoming. You become aware of the silences that exist between words, between actions, choices, results, changes. That’s where you grow – in those silences. All that you feel is all that you are, and all that you know is all that you know, and you emerge from that silence ready to live out loud again: sore and blue and jubilant, outrageous and raucous and clamouring for more. The sound of silence. The sound of self emerging.”
~ from Embers, One Ojibway’s Meditations (Douglas & McIntyre, 2016)
