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THE SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The Gifts of Silence

Mark 6:30-34

Anne D. LeClaire is a writer and a compulsive chatterer.  She says that, during one study hall in high school, she got three detentions because she couldn’t stop talking to one of her friends.  She is frequently shushed during movies because she is talking. Silence, she says, is alien to her personality.

Nevertheless, one day, she is walking along the beach near the home on Cape Cod she shares with her husband.  She is grieving for a friend who is about to lose her mother.  She is also overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for life and all of living.  Then she hears a voice.

Sit in silence.  The voice is so clear she turns around to see who is there.  She sees no one, but hears the voice again, Sit in silence. 

At first, it seems absurd.  She is the last person who would ever spend any time in silence.  That would be for monks and hermits.  She hasn’t even been to church in years.  And people who listen to disembodied voices get written off by society and sometimes placed in mental institutions.

Nevertheless, she does what the voice says.  She decides to spend an entire day in silence.  She will continue her work as a writer, but she will not speak to anyone or check her e-mail or listen to any of several TVs, CD players or radios in her house. 

Despite the resistance of her family and friends, particularly her husband, she continues this practice every first and third Monday and has done so for 17 years.  She has had her own resistance as well.  Perhaps that is the most challenging part of undertaking and maintaining a practice silence for whatever period.  But there are also many benefits as well, most of all the chance to do deep spiritual work.

She describes all of this in her book, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence, (Harper Collins, 2009.)  One of the most remarkable descriptions of silence, however, comes from a third grader in North Dakota , part of a group of children working with fellow writer, Kathleen Norris – “Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go.” (p. 139)

Maybe this is the reason that Jesus takes the disciples off to a deserted place.  Jesus had sent them out preaching, casting out demons and healing the sick and they have just returned.  The death of John the Baptist is surely also on their hearts.  Still their work continues.  And they are so busy that they don’t even have time to eat.  If they are that busy, then it is easy to imagine that they have forgotten their souls as well.

The story doesn’t specifically mention silence, but it is deserted place, a solitary place, away from the demands and distractions that their ministry has brought upon them. 

The silence and solitude do not last long.  The crowds seek them out.  Jesus does not run from them, but has compassion for them, as a shepherd for his sheep.  He does not judge any of them, who they are or what they need or why they are there.  And I believe that compassion is one of the gifts of silence.

There are a number of reasons I am drawn to silence.  Certainly one is that I am quiet by nature.  You know that about me.  I’m a real nice guy, if only I would talk more.  Most people in my life think that about me, including my wife and my mother.  Silence can be a guard to my quietness.  It provides relief from the obligation to talk.  But if that was the only thing that silence did, it would be of little spiritual value.

Silence is a way to spend time in our inner world.  As much time as I spend in that world, I don’t always like to get very close to the “real” me.  I use music and internet and, yes, even books, to distract me from facing whatever is on the inside.  Not that any of these is necessarily bad, but too often I will find myself feeling compelled to go on-line and check the same six websites I just checked a half hour ago.  Or comb Amazon.com for the next book I might read and add it to my wish list.  Or look at the New York Times Crossword site to see if there is a puzzle I might have overlooked.

Still, I have amazed family and friends, and maybe even all of you, by going on a ten-day silent meditation retreat recently.  This meant not merely no talking, but no books, no cell phones, no music, and no internet.  In this setting, every external distraction was kept to a minimum, so that the focus could remain inward. 

As quiet as I am, this kind of intense silence is not something I have always been comfortable with.  It is something I have had to work up to.  I have sometimes said that, while it is easy for me to be quiet on the outside, my inner child has ADD.  My inner child has trouble settling down.  My mind craves input.  I get bored easily.

I have had to learn to sit with my boredom, to notice it, to observe it, to explore it, but not to judge it, because judging it, I have found, will only make it worse.

When you sit quietly for several days in a row, though, boredom is not the only thing that comes up.  All kinds of inner fears and desires arise.  All those things we generally like to distract ourselves from with all kinds of people and projects and entertainment and busy-ness.

So, just as I do with boredom, I try simply to observe, without judgment, what is going on in my mind, not with the goal of eliminating them or of achieving a greater sense of peace, but with the purpose of understanding them and my mind more.  And this takes a great deal of compassion.  It takes compassion to see these fears and desires and confusions clearly, rather than driving them away or becoming so wrapped up in them I can’t see straight.  And it takes compassion for myself when, over and over again, I am unable to do just that.

So, the task for me in meditation is – How can I see my deepest fears and my most nagging desires more clearly?  And how can I see them and understand them as God sees them and understands them?  For God sees with utmost clarity, but God also sees with deepest compassion.  So, my biggest aspiration in meditation is to see myself with God’s compassion, that I might see others with that same compassion.

Even though there were 45 other people doing this with me, this kind of silence, as I have said, is not for everyone.  In fact, silence can have a negative connotation for you, especially if you have ever had to live under “enforced silence.”  Nevertheless, everyone, I believe, can benefit from a little bit of chosen silence in their life. 

If so, Anne LeClaire has a list of suggestions about small ways you can get more silence in your life:

On the commute to work or while running errands, turn the car radio off.

When performing a routine chore – folding laundry, washing dishes, straightening a room, weeding the garden – make it a habit to do the task in silence.

After finishing a telephone conversation, sit quietly for a minute or two.  Breathe.

Take a long walk without earbuds pouring noise into your head.

Take the television out of your bedroom.

Take a sabbatical from e-mail.

Waiting in line, in doctors’ offices, in the car, sit without activity or without talking.

When you are part of a group, experiment with just listening to the others converse, staying silent yourself.  Observe your own inner dialogue.

Go to a place in nature and experience the peace.  Watch birds.  Look at trees.

Stroke your cat. 

You may never go on a silent retreat or spend a day or even an hour in silence.  You may not choose any kind of silence in your daily life.  And silence is by no means the only way to cultivate self-understanding and compassion in your life.   But in our fast-paced world, a little bit of silence may be just the antidote we need to the busy-ness and crazy-ness that often drives our lives.

And who knows?  It may even help you remember to take your soul with you wherever you go.