A Wave Rising After the Shut Down

Forty days of silence, sorrow, and stillness… and the question of who will rise when it ends.

On Tuesday, November 11, we’ll reach forty business days of silence. Forty days where everything shut down. Forty days that feel like the world’s longest inhale.

When I think of forty, I think of testing and refinement. I think of those stories where rain doesn’t stop or where someone wanders through a desert searching for what’s next. I think of the prophet Elijah—how he fled into the wilderness, exhausted and afraid, traveling forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God. I think of how he was fed by grace along the way. And how, after the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, God’s voice came not in thunder but in a sound of sheer silence.

That silence wasn’t confusion. It was full of revelation. And maybe ours could be too if we listen.

Lately, the air feels heavy with that horrific sound of silence. That not-knowing. People are tired. People are waiting. Some are counting coins. Many of us are repeating prayers. There’s an ache that sits between us when we talk, like we’re all holding the same invisible weight but pretending it’s light.

Forty days.

That number keeps echoing in my mind.

It feels ancient, sacred even—like a hidden lesson we’re being asked to learn again.

But this silence, for many of us, feels like punishment.

Not divine. Not cosmic. Not some cleansing fire from above.

It feels human. It feels cruel. And it’s too heavy.

The kind of punishment that comes when those in power forget who they serve.

While some try to speak up for the weary, others treat our lives like chess pieces on a board. They move us, delay us, and dismiss us.

And the cost keeps climbing: higher bills, higher fears, higher walls between us.

Even the heavens mirror us. In astronomy and astrology, Venus disappears from the sky for about forty days. The planet of love and connection retreats into shadow, turning inward, reevaluating. They call it retrograde which is time when light bends backward so that we might see what’s been hidden.

Maybe this season is a cosmic reflection of our own pause. A chance to ask: what still shines when everything goes dark?

I’m feeling a stirring in my spirit. Someone. Something. A current of justice waiting to rise. We need a voice. We need a people. We need a power that says, “We’ve had enough.”

Because forty days will come and go.

Eventually, rain stops. Ground dries. Hope breaks through the cracks.

But how we emerge will depend on what we do in the midst of the silence.

Have we only complained but not spoken up for others?

Have we lost so much strength that we are shrinking in our own skin?

Are we so anxious that every day feels like a repeat of the last?

Are we just angry, lashing out for the sake of lashing out?

Or are we being proactive? We are seeking wisdom, seeking guidance, seeking to move with courage and compassion again, right?

Someone needs to rise up.

Maybe it’s one of us. Maybe it’s all of us.

Maybe it’s a divine and undeniable wave rolling in to remind us who we are. And who we are becoming.

I hope that wave comes and ends the forty days of silence. Or however long it may be.

When this is all over, may we look back and say: we grew, we changed, we remembered.

We did not waste the waiting.