Silence at the Center

Why do we flee?

What are we afraid of?

Death? Life?

"What is your life about, anyway?

Nothing but a struggle to be someone.

Nothing but a running from your own silence."

(Rumi)

It is in silence that we come face to face with ourselves and with the world through reflection and contemplation.

It is in silence that we learn to listen and hear that still small voice letting us know what our life is all about.

Silence is the stillness of a pond reflecting back to us ourselves and what we need to know.

And yet...

It is interesting that at birth we emerge from silence and darkness and at death we recede into silence and darkness. But in between, we are drawn to the glitz and glamor, din and clamour, and neverending busyness; fleeing as if afraid of the silence and what it might have to say to us or require of us.

Silence as a Spiritual Discipline

How can we hear . . . if we don’t listen?

How can we listen . . . when there is so much noise

. . . in our heads?

. . . in our hearts?

. . . in our lives?

How can we hear . . . through the din and the clamor

. . . the inner teacher?

. . . the still small voice?

How can we see . . . if we don’t look?

How can we look . . . with such allure and wanting

. . . in our heads?

. . . in our hearts?

. . . in our lives?

How can I see . . . through all of the glitz and the glamour.

. . . my inner light?

Give me peace

Give me silence

. . . in my head

. . . in my heart

. . . in my life.

Every moment of every day

Everywhere that I go

And in everything that I do.

“If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.” (Thomas Merton in Seeds of Contemplation, p. 131)

Silence as the Source

It is from silence that all things come forth; wisdom and understanding, the sacred and the truth ... reality.

Much of the following I wrote in 2012. This understanding was the cornerstone of my awakening and my healing.

In many senses, all of my writing and all of my healing has come out of the silence. It wasn’t until I entered the silence and remained there, listening and waiting … on strength in weakness … on light in darkness … on a still, small voice in the chaos … that I began to heal. But let me back up a few years…

Life had dealt me a blow beyond blows taking out the very foundation I was building my life on. I was left with nothing, as nothing, in nothingness, full of nothing. But I couldn’t see that the nothingness within is really the silence that I desperately needed to befriend; the silence that I needed to make home, my hearth of belonging.

The pain from divorce, foreclosure on my home, loss of job, clinical depression among other things was devouring me as well as radiating from my pores. People that had been close could no longer be found. I had no one to turn to at a time that I needed a community of people just to stay alive. I desperately looked to the church for soul and heart support. I practiced the traditional Christian way that I had been taught all of my life; the way that so many old saints in my church had attested to; the way that the preacher taught; the way that I had seen work all my life. I read scriptures, I prayed out loud and under my breath. I attended prayer meetings, asked for prayer, and listened to others speak out in prayer. I attended church services regularly, actually more than usual. I made music in worship to God; singing in the choir and playing flugel in the worship band. But I found that the loneliness and emptiness, this creeping nothingness, was overtaking the landscape of my soul, heart, and mind. I had arrived at the Dark Night of the Soul that John of the Cross wrote about in the sixteenth century. Most of this, I discovered later because the confusion of my mind was too deep and dark for me to see much of anything.

In the summer of 2009, I was sent by my employer, Hope Network, to the Toronto Summer Institute on Inclusion, a conference on person centered planning for those that work with people with disabilities. We began every day with Shambhala Meditation practice for maybe 10 minutes. This practice of silence and meditation was a mindfulness practice that helped us to be fully present for learning throughout the week. It was an amazing experience. The conference was not just informational but it was transformational for me. It took a while to really understand why, though. The meditation that was led everyday by a Buddhist Priest was a very simple secular practice. By an act of grace, I had the opportunity to go to supper with this man, Alan Sloan. We talked for two hours about life and spirituality and people. Toward the end of the time together, he gently said to me, “There is a murkiness within your soul. You must let go of the hurt from your past and live in the present. Meditation is the only thing that will heal you.” I listened appreciatively and thoughtfully, smiling and nodding my head with furled brow; trying to grasp what he was saying to me. He said no more and we ended with a peaceful smile on his face and a puzzled look on my face. He knew it would take time for me to understand. He also knew that if I would remember this and contemplate this with discipline, a time would come that I would understand; not with my head, but with my heart.

What he said resonated within my soul as true but I am not so sure that I fully understand even today. As you can see, I am still trying to put this deep understanding into words three years later. But this I know. I have experienced tremendous healing of mind, heart, soul, and body. Today, I am a different person than I was at that time.

As you know, I was still writing, blogging my journey, my pain, my questions, and everything else that mattered. Low and behold, my sister Kay’s best friend Kay from high school connected with me over the internet about my blog. Ever since then, she and her teenage daughter have been meeting with me every couple of months to talk of the deeper things of life. She had been experiencing a deep longing for conversation at a deeper level. She could not find people in her community that could go beneath the surface to the things that really matter. As I expressed this spiritual journey I was on, trying to figure out where it was that I was headed, she said to me, “You sound like a Quaker. You should find a Quaker gathering.” Heck, I didn’t know Quakers still existed, let alone in my own community. And then to find out the they worship in silence!!! I desperately needed the spiritual discipline and practice of silence. This I knew. But I didn’t know where to turn to find it. The rest is history, er, or rather, is being written here in my blog.

There is a silence at the center of all things, including me. When I go there and listen and wait, I am overwhelmed by a spirit of peace and love, a spirit of awe and wonder. And I carry away a peace within that passes all understanding. I carry it throughout the week. I carry it to my friendships and other relationships. I carry it to my work and into my home. Sure I lose my center, but it is never gone, and I always know how to return. Listen and wait in silence.

I find that purpose, meaning, and truth for my life arises from this silence.

It is only out of the silence that the words arise to describe my journey.

Isn’t it interesting how full of noise and glitz, clamoring for our attention, our society is. Often our churches become full of the same, noise and glitz, clamoring for our attention. “Come to us, take a seat, receive our service, pay your dues” (tithe). But what I found is a still small voice waiting, in the silence, for my attention. It was saying, “Shut up, sit down, be quiet. Listen to the silence and wait to see what you might be given, unconditionally” no matter where or when or with others or by myself. For me it brings healing, inspiration, purpose, and meaning. Silence, for me, has been transformative simply because it shifts my attention from external authority to internal authority, from myself to a deeper place within, my ground of being.

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather around us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” (William Butler Yeats from Earth, Fire, & Water)

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“Stillness is where you meet with the essence of things…In stillness we can begin to let go of external voices, stereotypes, and clichés that crowd out original, personal and internal voices. Those discordant outer voices fade away in stillness. Stillness is a place of rooting oneself in a much larger field of being.”(John Fox, Finding What You Didn’t Lose)

Life’s Rhythm Is Silence

“Life is not to be regarded as an uninterrupted flow of words which is finally silenced by death. Its rhythm develops in silence, comes to the surface in moments of necessary expression, returns to deeper silence, culminates in a final declaration, then ascends quietly into the silence of Heaven which resounds with unending praise.”

(Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island)

“Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood is ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence … What are the fruits of silence? They are self-control, true courage or endurance, patience, dignity and reverence. Silence is the cornerstone of character.”

Ohiyesa

”Solitude can be a home coming to your own deepest belonging.” (John O’Donohue)

“If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.” (Thomas Merton in Seeds of Contemplation, p. 131)

“The highest truth cannot be put into words. Therefore the greatest teacher has nothing to say. He simply gives himself in service, and never worries.” (Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching)

“It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.” (Thomas Merton)

“Prayer Is Not Hearing Yourself Talk, But Being Silent, Staying Silent And Waiting Until You Hear God.” (Soren Kierkegaard)

“A man prayed and, at first, he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until, in the end, he realized that prayer is listening.” (Kierkegaard)

‎”Deep down, we know that when we step back, breathe, allow our agitation to settle, and simply start paying attention, we often see new possibilities in situations that once seem intractable… only in this contemplative state are we able to touch the truth…” (Parker Palmer, The Politics of the Brokenhearted)

‎”The best in art and life comes from a center – something urgent and powerful, an idea or emotion that insists on its being. From that insistence, a shape emerges and creates its structure out of passion. If you begin with a structure, you have to make up the passion, and that’s very hard to do.” (Roger Rosenblatt)

Mother Teresa was once asked in an interview, “What do you say when you pray?” She replied, “Nothing, I just listen.” So the reporter asked, “Well then, what does God say to you?” Her answer, “Nothing much, He just listens.” (Shane Claiborn, Prayers for Ordinary Radicals)

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment (William Penn).