Deafening Silence

This is an invitation to look at everything around us as consciousness trying to emerge through us so that we can accelerate our relational evolution. I cannot pretend like that there is not a loving force that is working through the best and worst in each of us to wake us up so we can see both the forest and the trees and neither the forest or the trees. I’m not suggesting that I am fully awake all of the time. But my alarm clock is hella loud and goes off pretty frequently. And when I am awake, I see that we are often only seeing one side of the tip of the iceberg, when there is a whole other side as well as everything underneath and the ocean within which the iceberg floats, and the land that contains the oceans and so much more. All this to say, none of us gets all of everything about anything. And this is why we need to break through after this breakdown. Not all of us. But some of us have to take the hits and not hit back unless it forwards individual and collective liberation. In that case get to smacking. But only smack (figuratively) in love.

Deafening Silence
___________________

Silence is not violence.

These words just rhyme

Violence is violence 

And we see it all the time

Some of us say nothing 

For a whole lot of reasons

Some because we’re cowards 

Some because our words are out of season

And there’s a whole other reason

For our unspoken ploys 

When everyone is screaming 

We choose not to add to the noise

Instead we align with true peace

Working from the inside out

So that a single sentence can break through

The din of 10 million shouts

It’s a strategy too uncommon

But often the only one that works

Because the source of all the turmoil 

Is often a battle of hurts versus hurts

Hurt People hurt people

Healed people heal

So the best we can do for all of us

Is to master how we feel

Controlled by our emotions

The good we mean to do’s distorted 

Our goal is to bring about a better world

But our methods are contorted

Pain cannot undo one’s pain

Though it may keep it at bay

But this is only temporary

The pendulum will always swing the other way

And when it does, there will be a backlash

This is always the way it goes

Like peaks and troughs in an ocean

This is just the way it flows

It will be no other way

No matter how hard we try

Because just like if you try to push a wave

You efforts will always be denied

But do not be discouraged

Just pay attention to the patterns

In time you will be able to anticipate

The unfolding of all that matters

And once you see it, you can’t unsee it

The only response is to surrender

Accept your best was never good enough

So that a better way can enter

A Way that that acts from Stillness

That speaks from the cataclysmic Sound of Silence

The Undoing that undoes all that humans contrived

Until there is no such thing as violence

© Copyright 2025 Pedro Senhorinha Silva

What Artists Reveal (WAR)

There’s a war happening
There’s a war happening 
In the Artist’s heart in All Ways
There’s a War Happening 
War of the worlds 
War inside
Collateral damage 
Even if no one dies
There’s an internal battle
When a baby cries
Hunger and no food
Creates a world of lies
Open your eyes
It’s not just me that’s singing
It’s an entire Universe 
Of controlled screaming
Destroying ourselves 
Just to find meaning
I defy meaning
With my dreaming
Because there’s a war happening
There’s a war happening
In the Artist’s heart in All Ways
There’s a War Happening
Artists exist
To control the chaos
But the irony is 
They don’t want to pay us
When tyranny comes 
First thing they do is take us
But we just keep creating
As they all forsake us
We’re springs of creation
They cannot remake us
Transmitting love
To even those who hate us
There’s no argument 
They cannot debate us
Proof of God’s Love
Is that God creates us
We just surrendered to the fact
That we can’t create ourselves
Then miraculously
We can create ourselves
Given the authority 
To transform our hells
These prison walls 
Are no more our cells
Our presence is the secret
That no one tells
The holes in our hearts 
Have become our wells
And it’s from these wells
That your soul’s drinking
Thoughts become things
So we’re not thinking 
We live by inspiration
We only move when still
Translating silence
To express our will
Channeling frustrations
So the truth’s revealed 
And we’ll keep on creating
Until the world is healed

© Copyright 2024 Pedro Senhorinha Silva

In an upcoming article for the People Are Not Things Linkedin Newsletter, in reflection on a training I was just a part of in DC, I will examine the role art plays in creating new models for human compatibility and flourishing even in the face what could appear to be imminent institutional collapse. In addition to the folks present at the convening, I was inspired by Asha Romeo (https://www.asharomeo.com/) to write this piece and use AI to create this image. Asha sang the hook on my rap single, Take This Life (Make It Light) and sang for several services when I was a pastor to include the final song on my last Sunday. She is a singular talent with amazing musical range. She will soon be relocating from our neighborhood to LA to pursue her music career.

When I thought about her journey as a child from a small town named Gondar in Ethiopia to Boulder, CO and how because of that journey this community has been filled with music that would have not otherwise been here, I realized something about art that I had never considered before. Artist transmute chaos into culture. Even when I think of my own artistic expressions, I know them to be the result of wrestling with a lifetime of polarizing tensions that through inner struggle show up in the word as–at least semi-coherent–expressions of the underlying harmony that I believe turns potential danger into a potent dance with what could be considered conflicting loyalties.

Mindful of this, in this poem, I wanted to celebrate what she and other artists bring to our spaces by bending chaos to their creative will. Without them, where would we be? And more than that, I want to encourage each of us to tap into the artist that lives in each of us. I hypothesize that much of the challenges that we are experiencing in many of our social landscapes is because of unmetabolized traumatic experiences that work themselves out in our interactions with others on every level from interpersonal to international. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. With artistry, we can choose to create systems that works better for more people.

Take This Life (Make It Light) [https://youtu.be/pMVTFt5cYk4?si=KtoVSqVXh0-u4Z13]

The Visitation – Being a Healing Presence

In our spiritual community at First Congregational Church Boulder, UCC some of our members are reading a small book called, The Art of Being a Healing Presence. Those of us reading it, are part of a small group of people who are choosing to heed the call to embody a healing presence with community members who are open to our invitation. Over the months that we’ve been meeting, my heart has increasingly found joy in our time together encouraging each other as we discover the gift of Visitation together. I wrote the following poem to/for them to both express appreciation for their gifting of themselves and to remind them that when we are being present, every moment counts.

The Visitation
It was only for a moment
It was here and it was gone
But when they think of the Visitation
The Presence lingers on

Breaking into Time-space
Eternity in half an hour
When two or more gather here
We’ve invited in the Power

Never underestimate,
What a moment can unfold
A single earthly encounter
A lasting balm for the soul

You were called to bring the Presence.
Being is what you do.
Giving form to the Love,
That preceded me and you

© Copyright 2018 Pedro S. Silva II

Matthew 18:20
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”