Silence-Intro

Gregg’s Reflection

Simon and Garfunkel made some incredible music together. Bridge Over Troubled Waters came as I was struggling to find myself in my college years. Another great hit was The Sound of Silence. While the music and words moved my soul, I now read it as a mystical text. It speaks of visions emerging from silence, a light that shines in the darkness, and words of prophets emerging where you would never expect it, among the least and last. Give a listen as you ponder the lyrics.

What voice do you hear whisper in the sounds of silence? My most profound visions and voices have come to me in the silence of meditation. My life unfolded on God’s faint path as I saw those visions and heard the words of silence.

In 1 Kings, we hear of a gentle whisper, a still, small voice. I have found that God comes to me in a whisper, and silence is the only thing that allows hearing that whisper of God’s Voice. We can and do ignore that voice, and our lives are missing a great deal without that guiding voice. As we awaken to the gentle movements of Spirit, we realize those prompts have been there the whole time, we just couldn’t see or hear them.

Sitting before God in silence each day has been the most transformative spiritual practice I have found. Most of the deep change in my life has come from my time in silence. Richard Rohr talks about a tricycle as an analogy to our faith journey. “The front wheel is our experience of God, directing the path of our spiritual journey. Scripture and Tradition are the two back wheels carrying the weight that authenticates our experience of God.

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Journaling Prompts

What is it like when you can push through all the chattering voices in your mind to find silence? Be Still are my words to let go of thoughts and usher in silence. What word or practice lets you find the silence of God? What places or spaces let you experience God?

Scripture

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper, a still, small voice.

1 Kings 19:11-12

Teach me, and I will be silent.

Job 6:24

I will sit in silence and hearken to what God speaks within me.

Psalm 84:9

Thus saith the Lord God, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”

Isaiah 30:15

Incline your ear and come to me; listen, so that you may live.

Isaiah 55:3

Be silent before the Lord.

Zephaniah 1:7

Learn to love and honor your interior silence.

I Thessalonians 4:11

RENOVARE Bible notes on Luke 1

Have you found your silent practice? Found the peace that comes when you enter the silent land? “In contemplation you learn to trust your Vital Center over all the passing snags and jerks of emotions and obsessive thinking. Once you are anchored in such a strong and loving soul, which is also the Indwelling Spirit, you are no longer pulled to and fro with every passing feeling. You have achieved a peace that nothing else can give you and that no one can take from you.”

Notes on (John 14:27)

Ancient Writings

Trinity! . . . lead us beyond all knowledge and light, to the highest summit of your mystic Word, where your simple, absolute, and changeless mysteries rest hidden in the luminous darkness of your silence.

St. Dionysius the Areopagite

Silence is never merely the cessation of words . . . Rather it is the pause that holds together-indeed, it makes sense of-all the words, both spoken and unspoken. Silence is the glue that connects our attitudes and our actions. Silence is the fullness, not emptiness; it is not absence, but the awareness of a presence."

John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers[1]

True silence is a key to the immense and flaming heart of God. It is the beginning of a divine courtship that will end only in the immense, creative, fruitful, loving silence of final union with the Beloved. Yes, such silence is holy, a prayer beyond all prayers, leading to the final prayer of constant presence of God, to the heights of contemplation, when the soul, finally at peace, lives by the will of Him whom she loves totally, utterly and completely. Hospitality will be deep and real, for a silent heart is a loving heart, and a loving heart is a hospice to the world.

Celtic Daily Prayer, p. 798

Silence is threefold—first of the mouth, second of the mind, and third of reason.

Hugh of St. Victor, Bernard McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mystics, p. 338

There is nothing so much like God in all the universe as silence.

Meister Eckhart, Kathleen Singh, Grace in Dying, p. 143

There is no better way of serving the Word than by silence and listening. Cherish this great silence within, nourish it frequently, so that it may become a habit, and by becoming a habit, a mighty possession.

Johannes Tauler, Sermons, p. 40

When you remain silent from the thinking and willing of self, the eternal hearing, seeing, and speaking will be revealed in you. Your own hearing, willing, and seeing hinder you so that you do not see and hear God.

Jakob Böhme

Modern Writings

Going into silence for the first time, people experience a certain about of interior noise. “That was a terrible experience. All my thoughts buzzed around me like flies. I thought about everything but God.” The master replied, “Oh that’s perfectly natural. It takes a long time for the person of today to close the wings of his intellect and open the door of his heart.”

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia.

It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet.

Ernest Hemingway   

When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively, no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer. Let me seek, then, the gift of silence...and solitude where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

Thomas Merton

God’s first language is silence. Everything else is a poor translation. Without doing anything, silence does everything in us.   

Thomas Keating

Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.

Anthony De Mello, One Minute Wisdom, p. 126

Silent meditation is one of the most direct ways downward into the ground and inward to the center. Silence, the heart of contemplation, is our portal into wisdom, it is the means by which we encounter God who is not other than us.

Bruno Barnhart, Second Simplicity, p. 36

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

Ram Dass

Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful and attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self. It is a harrowing journey, a death to self – the false self – and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves. This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want.

Basil Pennington, A Place Apart

Dear God, Speak gently in my silence. When the loud outer noises of my surroundings and the loud inner noises of my fears keep pulling me away from you, help me to trust that you are still there even when I am unable to hear you. Give me ears to listen to your small, soft voice saying: “Come to me, you who are overburdened, and I will give you rest . . .for I am gentle and humble of heart.” Let that loving voice be my guide. 

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 5/31/20

For me, the two correctives of all spirituality are silence and service. If either of those is missing, it is not true, healthy spirituality for the long run. Without silence, we do not really experience our experiences. We may serve others and have many experiences, but without silence, nothing has the power to change us, to awaken us, to give us that joy “that the world cannot give," as Jesus says (see John 14:27). And without clear acts of voluntary service (needing no payback of any sort, even "heaven"), a person's spiritual authenticity can and should be called into question. Divine Love needs to, and must, overflow! What You do for free is who you are. What you do beyond your occupation-how you pay your bills-is probably your true vocation and calling.

Richard Rohr, Richard Rohr’s book of daily meditations, I highly recommend, comes the question: Have you entered the Silent Land? P. 396

Silence and contemplation is a way of learning how to, in a nanosecond, instantly surrender your being entirely into God and then walk into the noise and fray with steel nerves — or with a quaking heart, but with steel nerves. You just do it.

Cynthia Bourgeault

In prayer we sit alone and empty. As we sit, though nothing happens, there is a subtle parting of the curtain. As lightly as a falling blossom lands on the water, we touch down upon the kingdom of the heart. We enter the domain of spirit that stands within, yet beyond all that is logical. Above all, we sit with a growing unfolding desire, a waiting that is vast.

James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, p. 71

Our spiritual journey must lead through the desert or else our healing will be the product of our own will and wisdom. It is in the silence of the desert that we see clearly our attachments to the trinkets and baubles we cling to for our security and pleasure. The desert shatters the soul's arrogance and leaves the body and soul crying out in thirst and hunger. In the desert we trust God or die.  

Dr. Dan Allender

Deep in the soul, below pain, below all the distraction of life, is a silence vast and grand-an infinite ocean of calm, which nothing can disturb; nature's own exceeding peace, which “passes understanding”. That which we seek with passionate longing, here and there, upward and outward; we find it last within ourselves.

C.M.C quoted by R. M. Bucke, Helen Exley, And Wisdom Comes Quietly