Just the sound of the kettle and the light coming in soft and unhurried through the window. I have loved that hour since childhood, growing up where mornings smelled like earth and wood smoke and there was no particular rush to perform for anyone 🕯️

I find it harder to reach that hour now. The world has grown very loud. Very insistent. It pulls at your attention from every direction and calls the pulling "connection." It mistakes noise for meaning and busyness for purpose.

My grandmother used to say that a woman who cannot sit quietly with herself cannot truly be present with anyone else. I used to think that was simply something old people said. Now I think she was precisely right 🌾

Silence is not loneliness. It is not emptiness. It is where you remember who you are when no one is asking anything of you. It is where prayer lives, and patience, and the kind of knowing that cannot be rushed.