After the Noise, We Sit

A quiet return. An invitation to attention.

I have been quiet here.

Not because the words ran out,
but because I did not want to add noise
where attention was required.

There are seasons when explaining feels productive.
And there are seasons when explanation only protects the self.

This has been the latter.

So I waited.

Not in retreat.
Not in protest.
Just learning again how to sit.

---

There is a kind of love that announces itself.
And there is a kind of love that practices restraint.

Lately, I am being trained in the second.

To bless without correcting.
To see without interpreting.
To withhold stories that would earn agreement.
To love people not as they are behaving,
but as they were made to be.

This kind of love does not make good copy.
It rarely makes good stories.
But it forms something quieter and truer underneath.

Children understand this instinctively.

They do not announce when they are present.
They simply arrive.

A box becomes a shelter.
A book becomes a world.
Imagination does not need commentary.

Watching that kind of attention is a corrective.
It reminds me how quickly adults turn presence into performance
and clarity into narration.

I am learning—slowly—to resist that reflex.

---

Silence is not absence.
It is not withdrawal.

It is the refusal to turn every moment into material.

Some things only grow when they are not spoken over.

There is joy here, too.
But it is the kind that does not demand a lesson.

Leaves rise.
The moon keeps its distance.
Nothing needs to be named for it to be enough.

This is the pace I am returning with.

Not faster.
Not louder.
Just attentive.

If that serves you,
pull up a chair.

Tags: attention, silence, formation, presence, restraint, learning to love, Forming 2.0