Women of the Quiet

Several weeks ago I was walking across a parking lot, deep in thought, when a woman wearing a blue headband called out, “Are you with the quiet?” I looked at her, not comprehending. She repeated, loudly, “You with the Quiet?” Yes, I’m with the Quiet, I said.

I was on my way to a daytime shelter for women. It was our second meeting after months of preparation, with a background check, discussions with the program director and training several volunteer facilitators to do this work. Our circle is called Finding Strength in the Quiet.

I haven’t done this work since before the pandemic. I knew not to bring old ideas with me, but to instead, listen. The world is not the same. The social climate is now more acute, as a darkness covers the land.

It’s a small room with no windows. I set some lavender stalks from my garden on a side table. One week ago, only two women came, but today the room is full – including the woman with the blue headband. She offered to translate for her friend, a Spanish speaking mother of two grown children. Half the women are housed, but the need to gather, the need for community, was pressing for them as well.

How can I tell you what happened in that hour, where hearts are touched by a peace that flows through their stresses and fears?  I spoke simply about the need to listen within ourselves, and to one another. And how this can help us to find the strength we need for our lives at this time. I hear from each of the women, what they are looking for, what are their deeper needs. And then, five minutes of silent meditation. Soon there is stillness.

When I end the meditation, the women sit quietly. Even when I ask if anyone would like to share, no one rushes in to fill the space. A few minutes pass, and the woman with the blue headband says that a weird thing happened when she closed her eyes. She felt she went so far away that when the meditation was over, that for a moment she didn’t know where she was. That it felt like sleep but wasn’t sleep. Really weird, she said.

I say that she just touched a deep place in herself, a place where her strength comes from.  The woman from Mexico then speaks. Here is a place where my heart can rest, she says. At the end of the hour, some of the women embrace one another on their way out. The co-facilitator, who has been a volunteer at the shelter for years, tells me that she has never seen the women get so quiet, and able to connect with their natural wisdom.

When I first became a grandmother, thirteen years ago, I had a dream. In the dream a tall, ebony skinned woman spoke with dignity and power. I am Grandmother. I’ve been waiting for you. Just then a man walked by. Find your strength, he said. Find your strength. Find your strength.

This dream returns to me now, in a way, full circle. For we need to care for life as we have never done before. Yes, I am a woman of the Quiet. There are many of us. Holding an inner focus like a prayer, for our loved ones, our communities, for our world.

This inner attention keeps open a space, a space I have seen in a dream, where there is a faint greening, of life not yet formed, of healing and possibility. We need to hold life, so precious, in our hands and in our hearts, and for some, to rise up as we have never done before.

The quiet. I love those words. The quiet of walking in the early morning. The quiet after the household goes to bed. Listening to the quiet in between words, and in the tumbling of coastal stones worn smooth as a wave draws water back into the ocean. What is its language?