Empathy

A friend once wrote the following lines to me:

"I walked alone this afternoon.
In the middle of a wood,
I stood
Against a tall tree
And watched
And felt as it moved with the wind.
I knew - had you been there -
It would have needed no words.
Others would never have understood
But you -
You would have known,
Would have felt.

Oh, how I miss you"

That empathy, that feeling of oneness with another is so rare. It is just as rare for me to find this connection with God and yet this is what I am looking for.


The stillness, the time to stand against an tree and watch and wait and listen, is a discipline that I am trying to learn. Once having experienced it, however, leaves a space, a gap, a longing for more.


Sometimes I think relationships are more about the spaces than the noise we share.