Silence as Spacious Presence

Cassidy Hall describes silence as “the place of infinite possibility.” In our recent SoulStream Living from the Heart conversation, she spoke of silence as the tomb of Christ, the place where something dies and something new can rise. These images invite us to see silence not as emptiness but as presence, or Presence, if you will. 

In silence, the noise of our inner striving begins to settle, and wisdom has room to breathe.

Cassidy shared how her journey through nineteen Trappist monasteries opened her to this deeper kind of listening. “Silence became the place where I could finally be with what was real in me,” she said. Her words echo the contemplative path explored by many where silence becomes a doorway into God’s quiet, steady presence.

This kind of silence also invites authenticity. Cassidy reminded us that when we stop trying to fix or perform, we meet both the self we have been avoiding and the God who has been waiting for us. “In silence,” she said, “we learn to see with less fear and more compassion.” It is here that belonging begins, not by fitting in but by showing up as who we truly are.

Silence also teaches us to see differently. Cassidy’s phrase “queering contemplation” describes this as a tilting of the head, a willingness to look again and notice God in places and in people we might have overlooked. Silence softens the inner edges so that our seeing becomes kinder, wider, and more inclusive.

Cassidy’s story is a gentle invitation to trust the quiet places that shape us.

Here are some quotes referred to by Cassidy during our podcast conversation:

A quote by Thomas Merton from his book, New Seeds of Contemplation:

“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious [people] are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God.“

A quote by Alan Watts (“In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965”):

“I have always done things in my own way, which is at once the way that comes naturally to me, that is honest, sincere, genuine, and unforced; but also perverse, although you must remember that this word means per (through) verse (poetry), out-of-the-way, and wayward, which is surely towards the way, and that to be queer—to ‘follow your own weird’—is wholeheartedly to accept your karma, or fate, or destiny, and thus to be odd in the service of God, ‘whose service,’ as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer declares, ‘is perfect freedom.’” —Alan Watts

Mary Oliver’s quote (essay “The Artist’s Task”):

“Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart—to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again. It needs the whole sky to fly in. It needs a field of silence. And the voices of critics should be hushed.”

May you find quiet moments that remind you of what is true in you.