Silent Communication

I’m in awe of the dance of poppies and sunlight. When the warm grace of the morning rays arrives, the flowers open in a silent embrace of the light. With evening’s fade, the petals close again, even as sunset yet illuminates the sky overhead. It’s a dance done to the rhythms of moments and seasons, as musical as silence can be.

Watching this dance under a June sky, I’m humbled by the natural wisdom contained and communicated within the silence. I think beyond poppies and sunlight, to the countless other ways nature’s life forms communicate beyond speech as we know it. 

As Suzanne Simard details in Finding the Mother Tree, there is silent communication between all living beings in a forest: trees, fungi, soil, bears, and beyond. Meanwhile undersea, the ability of octopuses to instantly shift hues provides nuanced communication as well as camouflage. In The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery explores how they express their complex and intelligent emotional expressions via color. It’s all as brilliant as sunset. 

The earth’s wild conversation includes us if we watch, sense, feel. What are the poppies, sun rays, octopuses, and trees communicating to us? What are we communicating in return, with intention or by accident? What does our dance of aliveness express?

This evening’s dance of poppies and sunlight speaks to me of collaboration. One essential purpose of flowers’ intricate beauty is to attract pollinators, necessary for their lives to lead to the next generation. Our lives too are dependent upon collaboration, including with those pollinators and the growing plants they nurture. Life’s continuance is never done alone.

The dance also expresses humility. No matter how powerful we may feel, we’re still only alive because of creatures so small that we may not even notice them. Interactions beyond our awareness are essential to our existence. Our respect and care in return are vital, in what we communicate through our daily wordless actions. 

Poppies and sunset also sing silently of beauty’s endless levels. To look closely into the center of a single poppy is to see the world expand into tiny yet deep realms of beauty. I can disappear into a single poppy’s patterns, forgetting all care, and enter a world so wild and wondrous as to test the limits of belief. It reminds me of a similarly transcendent feeling I had, the first time I snorkeled in Hawaii. There, the remarkable array of colorful sea life took me into a world as wild as any in the science fiction books I devoured in adolescence. 

When I’m attuned to nature’s silent communication, I often sense the presence of affirmations and messages that transcend speech. In the singing of an evening bird, I sometimes hear the voice of a deceased loved one. I’ve received affirmations in the form of clouds and light, attuned to my choices of love and purpose. In the silence there is room for my compass of spirit to reorient, refresh, and ready myself to open my own petals to another morning. 

Yes, beauty and all it communicates can inspire us, enliven us, give us the strength to transcend the more painful and messy aspects of human existence. Escape isn’t necessary. All we need to do to find grace is to look more closely at the beauty already surrounding us, communicating with us, and existing within us. What a sacred song that is, silently sung by the earth around us, as the rhythms of moments and seasons bring us new musical days.