The Sacred Fullness of Quiet: What Elaine Maria Upton’s “Silence II” Teaches Us Today
In a modern culture addicted to relentless noise, what if true silence isn’t an empty void, but the vibrant pulse holding our world together?
Silence II
Elaine Maria Upton
Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.
Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.
Silence is the mother singing
to her newborn babe.
Silence is the mother crying
for her stillborn babe.
Silence is the life of all
these babes, whose breath
is a breath of God.
Silence is seeing and singing praises.
Silence is the roar of ocean waves.
Silence is the sandpiper dancing
on the shore.
Silence is the vastness of a whale.
Silence is a blade of grass.
Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.
Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.
Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover’s
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.
Silence is God’s beat tapping all hearts.
Silence is the star kissing a flower.
Silence is a word, a hope, a candle
lighting the window of home.
Silence is everything –the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air. It is all
things dissolved into no-thing–Silence
is with you always…..the Presence
of I AM
Reflection
We live in a culture terrified of quiet. Notifications chime incessantly, algorithms compete for our attention, and solitude is frequently mistaken for loneliness. Yet in “Silence II,” Elaine Maria Upton completely dismantles the Western assumption that silence is merely an empty gap between sounds.
Upton insists that silence is not absence, but radical presence. It encompasses the entirety of the human condition: the mother humming to her newborn, the grief of a stillborn child, the dancer, the shoreline, and even the noise of a crowded street. Far from passive, silence is a living, breathing container that holds joy and sorrow, sound and quiet, creation and dissolution.
Applied to contemporary existence, Upton’s vision offers a lifeline. When we view silence as “the renewing sleep of Earth” and the divine “Presence of I AM,” turning off our screens ceases to be an act of deprivation. Instead, resting in quiet becomes an act of reconnection. Silence is the grounded space from which our clearest thoughts, deepest empathy, and truest creations emerge. In a fractured, overstimulated world, silence is not nothingness; it is the sacred ground upon which everything else comes to life.
As you read this poem, ask yourself:
Where in your everyday routine have you mistreated silence as an uncomfortable emptiness to fill, and how might your spirit change if you welcomed that stillness as a living, healing presence instead?