Let This Silence Become a Bridge

There are mornings when silence feels like sanctuary. Before the news, before the heartbreak, before the world becomes all fire and brimstone. I sink into the quiet Center, and I wonder—is this salvation?

Poet and CAC staff member Drew Jackson names this longing with clarity in his poem Let This Silence Become a Bridge. It’s a prayer for courage—the kind that walks silence into suffering, that follows Love to the edges, that dares to stand where the prophets call to the four winds.

Let This Silence Become a Bridge
by Drew Jackson, Center for Action and Contemplation

I wake in the morning and sink down into the quiet Center.
Before the news and the heartbreak.
Before the world becomes all fire and brimstone.
Tell me, is this salvation?
I could stay here, alone and away.
I could place my life in the company of the undisturbed.
But if I do, I will surely lose You.
Friend of Sorrows. Acquaintance of Grief.
Let this silence, then, become a bridge.
Let me walk it to where Love is.
At the edges. Amidst the rubble.
Trudging among the bones
Where the prophets call to the four winds
And a Voice cries out saying Live! Live!
Let this silence become a forgotten thing
If it does not lead me to the hill
Outside the camp.

Yesterday I wrote about the Jerusalem cross I received on pilgrimage in Lourdes. It’s a grounding and reminder that prayer is not escape, but fortification. That silence is not retreat, but preparation. That to be faithful is to walk toward the hill outside the camp, where suffering and salvation meet. It’s to walk the bridge of life.

So I pray. I persevere. I ask again. And I wear the cross not as ornament, but as compass—pointing me toward the margins, the bones, the breath of God.

Let this silence become a bridge.