• Cultivate Silence

    My children, “…diligently cultivate silence…” (Be still and know that I am God.) Rule of St. Benedict 42

    The spiritual discipline of silence has an age-old history. In the spectrum of spiritual disciplines, it belongs to the category of fasting. Exercises such as fasting–from food or from mental stimulus–not only benefit our physical and mental health, but also develop us spiritually. Over time, they help us reap a greater peacefulness, and increased fortitude to face whatever we must face in life.

    Silence need not be absolute to be beneficial. Even an ordinary person can practice it, even in a domestic context. You benefit physically from disciplining your consumption of food, and mentally from disciplining what you expose your mind to. This principle holds true even for people who are not seeking any sort of communion with God. It’s a basic fact of human health. Just as the person who cannot stop eating is showing signs of something amiss, so too the person who remains in a perpetual state of distraction. The one who cannot bear to be silent even for a few minutes is exhibiting a mental state akin to insatiable appetite.

    You may not learn to value silence until you’ve had the experience of caring for a screaming baby. The constant clamoring of children teaches us that the ability to stay quiet is a sign of maturity, whereas constant agitation and demands are the starting point of beginners in life.

    Silence as a spiritual discipline is not about finding a quiet environment, although of course this helps. But spiritual quiet is an interior state that is independent of whatever noise may be all around you. The discipline of silence has to do with the mental stimulus that you are free to regulate, not with all the noises that you do not control.

    Of course, there are people who should not engage in food restriction, because their bodies are in a fragile state. And people who are in a fragile mental state should not be seeking silence, especially if they are depressed. Some people need more nutrition, or more stimulus than they’ve been getting.

    But, if you are fit, the voluntary silencing of distractions can strengthen you spiritually. When you are at leisure to listen to something or not–music, or whatever else you normally turn to–simply refraining from this input can become a gesture by which you express to God your willingness to hear him. Even if you have nothing else to offer God, you always have this: the gift of yourself, expressed as the willing sacrifice of your attention, should he wish to speak.

    This doesn’t mean that when you practice silence, you will hear a supernatural voice. On the contrary, just as when you fast you can expect to feel hungry, when you are silent you can expect to hear nothing but the ordinary noises of your environment that you don’t normally pay attention to. If you have made yourself available, and you know very well that you have heard nothing divine, congratulations: this is a sure sign of your sanity. And you are in good company. The testimony of the saints through the ages is that they endured many long years of the silence of God before ever perceiving the voice of God.

    But the silence of God does not mean that he is absent. The God who sustains the universe at the atomic level sees and understands the effort you have made. Perhaps he will reveal himself in a spectacular way, but these interventions are rare and, by most accounts are terrifying when they occur. He doesn’t want to terrify or destroy you but to call you into harmony with himself. God knows what you can bear, because he designed you. He gave you the freedom to turn toward him, and when you exercise that freedom, even in a tiny way, he will surely draw near to the one attempting to draw nearer to him.

    On the way to hearing from God, you will have to face yourself. And for many people, the perpetual search for distraction is exactly the attempt to escape from themselves. In silence the troublesome thoughts you have been suppressing come into the forefront of your mind. Sorrows, anxieties and nagging perplexities come bubbling to the surface of your awareness. Rather than fighting them, hand them over to God in prayer: Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.

    Or perhaps you find yourself enduring a period of forced silence, not at all what you wished for. Since you cannot escape, you might as well offer God your willing attention. Who knows but he will open up a whole new path for you? All things work together for good for those who love God. He will communicate, probably not with signs and wonders to impress anyone else, but in ways meaningful to you. If you have gone wrong in some way, he will bring to your attention what you should correct.

    The God who made the universe is not a puppet on a string or a genie in a lamp. No one can summon him and make him perform. He speaks to whom he wishes and says what he means to say: when, where and how he chooses. But he also quietly draws near to humble hearts willing to set aside a moment of freedom in his honor. See if he does not repay you for your effort with some gracious gift of his own.

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  • Hold Your Peace

    The ninth step of humility is that a monk controls his tongue and remains silent. . . . for Scripture warns, In a flood of words you will not avoid sinning (Proverbs 10:19). [Rule of St. Benedict 7.56-58]

    When you get to the point of being able to hold your tongue, you know that the Holy Spirit really has been at work within you.

    First of all, you interact differently in a group of people, when everyone is venting grievances. You know from long experience that if you don’t chime in with a complaint of your own, you can’t participate in the conversation. But are you really so bad off today? The Spirit prompts you to remember what you can enjoy and be thankful for. You don’t really want to be one of these people for whom the only pleasure in life is the complaining.

    Or it’s time for opinions. Some people cannot NOT have a say. Their thoughts clack on compulsively without intermission.  They always know best, no matter the topic, and if they really don’t understand, they’re not interested. In a serious discussion, they tell everyone that they themselves don’t know what they mean–and yet they keep talking.

    Because social status is at stake, or success in a classroom or at a job, survival seems to depend on asserting your voice. Existence itself hangs on beating out the competition. To remain silent–unheard, unseen, unacknowledged–can feel actually dangerous, like standing still in a stampede. What will happen to you if you don’t jump in and jostle a place?  We know where the unimportant people end up: at the bottom, invisible, irrelevant, trampled.

    And yet, beneath and behind, present everywhere, seeing everything, we find God himself, sustaining all, yet so often unheeded.

    Remaining silent, listening to others is a way to imitate the character of God himself, and in imitating him, to know his peace. It is a fitting stance for a human being to remain quiet yet present, without asserting self-importance, because God himself is willing to remain present yet silent everywhere, all the time, when if he wished he could overwhelm and silence all voices.

    When you practice this act of humility, you find after a while that the insipid remarks of silly people do not irk you as they used too. That burning urge to have your say has dissipated. You are able to hold your peace.

    But just as proud people everywhere despise God for his silence and mistake his generosity for weakness, so you too may find that someone with whom you have always been gracious turns against you. You offer a listening ear, loyalty and unconditional acceptance. In return you may get–slander. The chill slither of malice through your soul leaves a hole that will not soon heal.

    Be still. Don’t play into the backstabber’s game. God hears your silence and sees your humility. He himself will enter within to comfort and sustain you. When the time comes for you to speak, the Word himself will be with you. Commit your way to him and hold your peace.

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