Silence

“Silence is solitude practiced in action.” – Henri Nouwen

“Don’t just do something. Sit there.” This was the title of a message Haddon Robinson preached in 1991 on Luke 10:38-42. In that passage Luke recounts the story of Jesus’ visit to the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. If you’re familiar with the story, you’ll remember that Martha was bustling about, trying to prepare a huge feast for her visitors (remember Jesus had at least 12 men in tow with him). Her sister Mary, meanwhile, simply sat at Jesus’ feet, letting Martha do all the work while she spent time with Jesus. This naturally perturbed Martha, who finally had enough and complained to her guest that he needed to send Mary to help her in the kitchen. Instead, Jesus refused, saying that Mary had chosen the better thing, and it wouldn’t be taken away from her.

Sometimes we can be so caught up in human doings that we lose sight of the fact that we are human beings, created and designed for intimacy with God. The spiritual discipline of silence helps to realign our hearts with this truth.

Before silence can happen, solitude must first exist. “Silence is the way to make solitude a reality,” Henri Nouwen once wrote (The Way of the Heart). For more on solitude, check the previous blog entry for my thoughts on that

WHAT IS SILENCE?

At the heart of silence is listening. It’s impossible to listen when we ourselves are talking. But this listening should not be to the world or people around us, but rather a listening for God. God rarely shouts. His word to us is often whispered. Only those who still their tongues, quiet their hearts, and remove all the distractions this world affords will be able to catch such a whisper. We live in a loud world; it screams and shouts in its demands for attention. The Prince of this world wants nothing more than to pull us farther and farther away from the God who created, saved, and loves us. In order to draw nearer to him, we must enter into quietness.

According to Nouwen, there are three phases in the transformational power of silence. Silence is a journey, an encounter, and a testimony.

Since speaking is the way of the world and often leads us into sin (cf. James 3), entering into silence is like taking a pilgrimage to another land. By definition, a pilgrimage is a journey, usually a long one, often made to a sacred place. By entering into silence, we take a trip from the loud world around us to a quiet, separate place, an alternate reality, if you will.

Of course, most religious devotees go on a pilgrimage to a sacred place in order to experience a greater awareness of God, or at the least, receive some manner of blessing from him. The inward journey of silence allows us to encounter the Spirit who dwells within us. When we close our mouths (including our inner voice) and remove ourselves from all the distractions around us, we can come near the inner fire of the Spirit.

Imagine your normal routine being like a house on a cold winter’s night with every door and window thrown open. Yes, there is a fire in the hearth, but the cold and the wind are pervasive. It’s hard to feel the heat at all. Entering into silence is like going around and closing all those doors and windows to the outside. Slowly then the heat from the hearth builds until it gives comfort and peace and assurance. So it is with the warmth of the Spirit when we can shut out all other distractions, including our own words. It is in this context that we can rest and listen for the soft whisper of the Master, the whisper that says, “I love you. No matter what you do or what is done to you, I will never stop loving you. You are mine. I will never leave you or forsake you.” In our brokenness, battling our hurts, hang-ups, and habits, we desperately need to hear such whispers, and hear them often.

In its final stage, our experience with silence leads us to bear testimony of it. The whisper of God that we catch in the silence of our interior lives becomes a beautiful and powerful secret that we cannot keep to ourselves. The culmination of silence is, oddly enough, the ministry of the word, where our message to others brings healing, hope, peace, joy, and above all, love.

Think about it. How often have you walked away from a conversation thinking to yourself, “Well, that could have gone better!” Or, “Why didn’t I think to say that?” How often are our words more hurtful or harmful than helpful? The discipline of silence will help us to change that trend.

HOW DO WE PRACTICE SILENCE?

It is important to note that the goal of this discipline is not to create an empty silence, but rather a full silence, a silence permeated with the presence of God.

As silence comes from within the context of solitude, it is critical to find a safe place and an undisturbed time to practice it. Find a location and a time of the day that works for you. Next, eliminate distractions. Turn off your phone. Lock out the cats. If you’re going to be distracted by checking the clock, set a timer. Whatever distraction can be removed from your space, remove it.

Next, listen. At first this will be a struggle. All the things swirling about in your mind will start to scream for attention. Resist attending to them. Your inner voice will tell you this is a waste of time. Ignore it. Your mind will wander. Order it hack to your place of silence. This whole exercise will seem impossible and hopeless at first, but if you stick with it, silence will come easier and easier.

Sometimes when I am greatly distracted with a great many things, I will turn to a centering prayer. I’ll blog more about them in a later post, but a centering prayer is generally two lines long, slowly repeated over and over, with the first line on our inhalation, and the second line on our exhalation. My go-to centering prayer is this:

(Inhale) I am your beloved son/daughter, whom you love;

(Exhale) With me you are well-pleased.

This “centers” me on the truth of this prayer that I can claim because I am in Christ. (Since the Father said it of Jesus, and since I am now in Jesus, the Father says it of me.) When I get to that point of focus, I then invite God into the space this has created, and I become still and silent. And I listen.

Sometimes I catch that whisper. Sometimes I don’t. Regardless of how it goes, I conclude my time of silence with a prayer of thanksgiving.

In his book Ordering Your Private World, Gordon MacDonald compares the stories of Moses and Aaron when the people of Israel were encamped at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Moses spent forty days and nights in silence, listening to the word God had for him. Aaron, on the other hand, spent that same amount of time listening to the people around him. One heard the love and affirmation of God and was encouraged to fulfill God’s call on his life; the other heard the complaints and criticisms of the people, and was so discouraged he disastrously gave the people what they wanted instead of what they needed. How you and I finish in this life will depend a great deal upon to whom or what we listen.

The fruit of silence is a powerful word from God that we cannot keep to ourselves. I encourage you to give the discipline of silence, with its sister discipline of solitude, a try some time.

Grace and peace.