Black tree limbs on silver sky, branches visible for the first time since March. Autumn foliage stripped away, dun, cluttering the forest floor. Hush, everything says. The trees pulse silence into the air surrounding them. One treads without sound on frozen paths, inhaling by the lungful. Blessed Novemberness.

* * *

Autumn foliage dappled my walk during a break in the monastic retreat. No, not retreat: crucible— intricate lectures, disclosures of dark secrets, discussions of Jung and archetypes and shadow and evil, preparing us to be spiritual directors, people who help other people grow in spirit. My longtime religion bore too much clutter to get to hush, so I walked and walked and longed for religion stripped down. 

Zen came to mind.

I turned back to my room and sat in zazen, the meditation practice with just two components: sitting and non-thinking. Nothing but the breath, inhaled by the lungful, pulsing silence into and out of my deep, deep self, suffused with hush. 

Thérèse of Lisieux—French nun, childlike saint—wrote about her First Communion, a rite of passage for children in one corner of my longtime religion. “I don’t want to enter into detail here. There are certain things that lose their perfume as soon as they are exposed to the air; there are deep spiritual thoughts which cannot be expressed in human language without losing their intimate and heavenly meaning.” 

Thérèse needs two whole sentences even to broach the wordless. Clearly the wordless doesn’t want broaching, or not with words. It tugs at us, a child pulling on a parent’s hand to get her attention, to remind us that I don’t want to enter into detail here. So the nun from Lisieux yields as few details as the November trees. 

* * *

We have to broach the wordless, though, so we can share it. With November, I can pull you by the hand and say, “Come see.” The wordless is invisible, so I must tell you. This may explain my longtime religion, its libraries of eloquent prayers and liturgies. For me, they are foliage: dazzling me with beauty, confusing me with clutter. 

* * *

The trees and liturgies are outside of me. In early years they introduced me to hush, seeping in from crisp November and the aroma of incense. I owe them gratitude. 

But they’ve been exposed to air. Their perfume has lost its tang. 

Inside hush is different. It wells from that deep, deep self, in zazen or the silent parts of my longtime religion. Its perfume is redolent as ever, suffusing Novemberness to the marrow of my bones.