The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing… that is a friend who cares.
~Henri Nouwen

Late last week I visited one of our dear ones who had had surgery. She was still in hospital and when I arrived the caring angels known as nurses were attending to getting her back into bed. I waited outside the room till she was settled. While I was standing there I looked up to see a card that was posted on the wall outside the doors. ” Quiet please…..healing in progress.” I allowed this invitation to slosh around in my mind. Those who have not been in hospitals with any regularity may not know that they can sometimes be one of the loudest spaces around. As family members and guests come and go from visits, as the pages for this and that booms through the sound system, as the beeps and blips of the various machines sound out, it can combine to make quite the racket.

Healing does take a certain dose of quiet. Stillness. Being present to breath and heartbeat. Anyone who has gone through any kind of surgery, accident or injury knows this. There is a certain amount of silence that is needed for whatever our bodies require to repair themselves to their healthy state. The same is true for those wounds that come to our minds, psyche, our hearts. Quiet can do much to soothe what ails our bodies and minds to create this progress toward healing.

Of course, in contexts that house our spirits, quiet has always played a part. Religious traditions that nurture the spirit have always understood the element of quiet that weaves through whatever other rituals help us express the spiritual in our lives. Whether that is outright silence in prayer or meditation or the wordless act of dance and intentional, mindful walking, quiet brings some gift of healing to the noise and chaos of our world.

But sometimes healing demands not so much quiet as a voice. Sometimes that voice is loud and big and fills the space that surrounds the one who longs for healing. I think of those whose lives have been torn by abuse or addiction, those whose voices have been stifled for a myriad of reasons. Sometimes healing comes in shouting or screaming so the world will hear, so you will be noticed, seen. Often the silence has held too much pain, too much secrecy and the healing can only begin with sound.

It has been my privilege over the years to be present to healing, healing that was physical and much that was of a spiritual nature. I have watched people come back from ailments or conditions of the body that seemed impossible. Other times I have been present to the measured motion of a spirit healed. All these movements have taken determination, tears, skill, patience and a powerful showering of prayer. There have been quiet, often silent moments in this healing. There have also been shouts of anger and frustration and railings toward self and God and the seeming unfairness of the world. At the time it seemed a big soup pot of countless ingredients that eventually led to healing.

But when those who know healing look back at their journey, and I count myself among them, they almost always see the intricate dance of silence and sound. The steps of the path of healing are like a weaving of so many threads we understand and those that are pure mystery. It has always been so.

For all those who seek healing this day, may there be the quiet that is needed and the space for the sound that must be heard.