The Language of Heaven, & Driving to school with your kid.

"There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven." Meister Eckhart

I am lucky to have a predominately easy relationship with my son. He is 14, and by great fortune, and probably because I value unlanguaged communication and have a habit of communicating with my kids, sister, and people in general with made up sounds, he will often get of the school bus and greet me with a giant squawk or EEP.

So much easier that way.  I mean really, what else needs to be said some days? A big ole sound opens the door for something new.

There is a balm in spending time with someone who is easy in silence, someone who exudes a deep quiet. My son is like that. I occasionally find myself in a brief tumult when we are driving somewhere in the car.  'It's been quiet for awhile!' my mind will say, as if that is a big problem.

Then I tune into the actual energy of the quiet in the car, and it is delicious. This is not a strained, bored, or angry quiet. This is not the quiet of a person who has cut off out of fear or resentment.

This quiet is relaxing and steady, the inner version of sitting by a fire on a fall day while raindrops stream down the window panes, coalescing, swelling and branching in momentary rivulets to their own calm cadence. 

All of this, simply sitting in the car, heading into a mundane errand with my kid. 

I asked him about it once. The quiet felt so good, and I wondered if he felt it too. He just said 'Yeah', but in a way that came from the good quiet. I asked if he had been thinking about something, and he said 'Yeah'. And it was a good, clean, measured thinking. I could feel the clarity of the thinking, like one of Bach's unaccompanied cellos silently filling the car.

That energy gets in the the spaces we occupy. Our basic state of being is always being transmitted. It is nice once we have some jurisdiction over that basic state, then we can be little walking apertures of silence, peace, or joy, exuding that healing quality into the places we go. 

When my son leaves home in a couple of years I will not feel that I missed his childhood. So many people we are with all the time, but never with. I have been with him many times in grounded quiet, and that kind of being with is never lost. 

This silence, this true being with, it can be cultivated. It can be found, touched upon and grown. The 'language of heaven' can enter your life.