silence

The Beauty Of Being Open To The “Other”

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We are sitting around a table.
A man is convinced he has found the philosophy which is the elixir to life.
He may be right, for the idea he speaks of is a beautiful one, but then he insists it isn’t just an idea, it is the idea.
The only one.
There is only one right philosophy and he knows it.

A palpable tension begins to travel around the table. A few people shift uncomfortably in their seats.
He asks, “What do you do when you are thirsty?”
Someone answers, “You drink water.”
“Yes there is only one thing to do when you are thirsty. This philosophy is that water,” he says.

Silence.
I want to join the uneasy silence, but I can’t help but disrupt it with a thought that is burning within me, “Yes, when you are thirsty, you must drink water, but water can be drunk in many ways, from a waterfall, a river, a crystal jar, an earthen pot, a glass cup, water harvested from the rain, water transformed from the sea, water from melted snow, water from a tap, a stream and a well. It seems there are many ways to drink the same water and quench one’s thirst. Aren’t there?”

Read the whole story at : The Huffington Post

Summer-Hose

Does Your Silence Weep Or Smile?

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When the crowds leave,
you to yourself.
And the music has dimmed,
it’s celebratory sounds.
Does your silence weep,
or does it smile?

by Shenaz Wahid

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While nature and prayer, carry a deliciously sweet silence, the silence I speak of in this poem, is the one we meet at the day’s end, the one that is revealing.
My silence has both smiled and wept, when life has willed.

In The Land Without Words

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You and I,
we meet better,
in the land without words.
Where love stirs and shakes,
the inner chambers,
of our human soul.

By SHENAZ WAHID

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Sometimes, a human being can have an incredible impact on us without knowing.
This poem is about sweet moments, shared in unworded silent longing and love.

The flame of love

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I know them as boys who love to party, the adventure daredevils and renegades,
but tonight in the mountain, they show another side.

We sit by the fire on the moonlit terrace. Every one is perfectly silent watching the flame dance.
“What do you see?”, I ask.
“I can’t quite explain nor describe it.” says Pat who is most entranced by the flame and gleaming like a child to himself.
Z : “I see a woman dancing.”
Me : “It’s like love, ever- shifting, ever-changing, never the same.”
Gor puts in a few more twigs.
Z : “She’s right, it’s like love, you need to feed it to keep it alive.”
Gor : “The spark needs to be there in the first place, to keep it alive.
Without that initial spark, nothing can keep it alive.”

Every one and everything falls back into silence.
In the silence, I think it is the divine that ignites the spark between two souls, that indescribable thing called Love, no money can buy it, no person can dowse it & when it is found between two such people,
they become tenders to the sacred flame of Love;
that God first sparked.

Not a word is said. Everything is in the flow. The river beside us, the wine in our veins and we ourselves,
as the full moon watches.

by SHENAZWAHID

To God

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God,
Thank you for giving me birth in a world full of beauty and full of agony.
One that only you understand, why you made it so.

Thank you for Love, and for the pain of hatred that teaches me Love’s worth.
Thank you for the sweetness of solitude, for the joy of company and for the aching loneliness that allows me to treasure both.

Thank you for the butterflies, mountains, fishes, oceans and trees.
Thank you for the friends I lost, ones I found and for those who stay through it all.
Thank you for the love I lost. Thank you for the love I found.
Thank you for those who come from nowhere, light a fire in my soul and change me forever in ways I couldn’t have done without them.
Thank you for those who make my heart cry without tears.

Thank you for my Angels and thank you for keeping me safe from the devils in my own mind.
Thank you for the moments of magic that turned into despair, and for the moments of despair that turned into magic.

Thank you for music and dance and for the deliciousness of silence. Thank you for the silence even when its loud.
Thank you for the joyous laughter. Thank you for the bitter tears.
Thank you for the sun and the moon. Thank you for the dark sky.
Thank you for light and thank you for the darkness, that gives the stars and moon a place to show themself.

Thank you for the moments I know myself, for those where I feel lost, and have a chance to find and be found.
Thank you for remembering me and thank you for forgetting all that I too must forget.

Thank you for those who understand who I am, for those who misunderstand and for those who couldn’t care less.
Thank you for all that I understand, and all that is far beyond me
in beauteous mystery’s womb.

Thank you for wisdom and insight and for my mistakes and folly.
Thank you for the nights of peace, and thank you for the restless sleepless nights.
Thank you for the mountains triumph. Thank you for failures abyss.
Thank you for the blessings, and for all that my foolish heart deemed as a curse.

Thank you for all that’s deep and for all that’s shallow in me, that needs digging.
Thank you for a mind that wants to turn moments into a story,
sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightful.
Thank you for words, without which I couldn’t tell any story.

Oh Thank you Dear God for the Dreams in my soul, for putting them there and thank you for all that is good and bad
that I will have to encounter along my journey’s length.
Thank you for what I know, for what I don’t, for what I will and for what I won’t.

Oh Thank you for People, both happy and sad as they make me. The ones who amaze and inspire, and the ones who hurt and confuse.
Thank you for keeping me company even when I don’t ask you to, and for never forsaking me even when I have myself
Thank you for all that has gone past me by, for now and for all that will be.

Thank you for magic and mystery, for revealing and hiding.
For all the funny contradictions of Life, the ecstasy and agony
one without which I wouldn’t know the other.

Thank you above all for LOVE
Thank you being a God of Love.

Thank you for it ALL.
Yours,
Shenaz

by SHENAZ WAHID