The blog has fewer and few readers and I know why. It is not that it is not indexed; it is that there are fewer and fewer people paying attention to anything. We are skimmers and scanners; we are no longer retaining anything long enough for it to matter.

So I would urge you to practice the art of listening to your own heart as you go about your day. It is your finest tool for spiritual practice. All it wants of you is your attention.

I sat in silence this morning and these thoughts arose.

I remember the little brick house in Sherwood Forest. I was five when we moved there and twelve when I left. I remember the front steps I would sit on and look at petunias my mother planted every spring. Pink and light purple ballerinas they were.

Around the corner Bob Woodyard lived in another little brick house. These were two-bedroom affairs built right after World War II. We knew nothing of that war and already the Korean War was in full-swing.

Across the street there lived a woman named Molly MacDonald and her husband Mac was in the war. She had a dachshund named Pepper and my mother and I would visit her. Molly played piano and she would urge my mother to bring me over to sing while she played. The song I sang was “Mockingbird Hill.” I can still sing it. She gave Pepper birthday parties to which my mother and I were invited. I think we were the only ones. We ate cake and ice cream and Pepper wore a little hat.

When I was twelve we moved to a big white two-story house and I didn’t see Bob Woodyard again until tenth grade. We were in different high schools but I went with him to a formal dance and he was still in love with me. I thought my school was better than his and I had a different boyfriend.

College came and my high-school boyfriend and I were still an item. Bob was away at Georgia Tech studying to be an engineer. When my boyfriend jilted me, Bob was waiting. He had been waiting for me since fourth grade. And so we married and moved to Atlanta.

We had almost 38 years together until cancer took him away in 2004. I have not cried in months but as I sat and remembered him this morning, I managed to feel the deep sorrow my silence is cradled in. It rocks me to sleep at night and walks with me during the day.

This sorrow is infinite and powerful. It carries me over the rocky ground of my life without him. It is dignified; nothing cheapens it. It is the thrum of the heart’s engine as it does what must be done. And I love him now with the love of that child in the little brick house. Nothing matters but that. It has led me to become the writer that I am. It originates in what is primal in me, in what matters the most. And my heart sings its song of silence.

Vicki Woodyard