Tag Archives: silence

Chapter 42: no talk after Compline

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Monks should try to speak as little as possible.

Why silence?

There is an almost constant stream of chatter going through my mind most of the day; there are lists of things to do being calculated, reflections and processing events, creating ideas and writing exercises all being churned away inside my brain as I walk around, sit quietly and even when I pray. It sometimes feels like my brain is producing the Window’s hourglass or Apple’s spinning ball as I process the world around me.

When it comes to prayer, finding a silence in which to encounter and hear from God, is tricky (on some days nearer to impossible!) Before I begin the liturgy I try to quieten the inner chatter using a entering prayer like the Jesus prayer or repeating ‘Maranatha’ slowing my breathing down and settling into a slower rhythm. The chatter begins to slow (if I concentrate) and we begin the liturgy, familiar and comforting; it uses just enough brain power to focus me more and, at times, I fall into the silence.

Of course this doesn’t always happen and the chatter is so overwhelming that I’m lucky if I can even remember the liturgy. It is a common view that we live too frantic lives. I don’t want to add to the reams and reams of paper and the gigabytes of webspace dedicated to showing us all how busy we are and the need to slow down. I’ve said it to myself so often, I’ve heard people tell me, as if it were simple, I’ve preached it from the pulpit and I’ve written it in more than one article; why is it so difficult?

The inner chatter is comforting, I think; it is a form of company in moments of aloneness. We are naturally social animals and we crave companions and so when we are denied that fellowship we fill the emptiness with fictional voices or with our own creative thoughts. Even the dye-hard introverts amongst us fill the silence with dreams and thoughts because, the truth is, the silence is frightening. In the silence we must face our true self without any of correction or pretence; ironically the true self is the last thing we want to see.

If your life is centred on yourself, on your own desires and ambitions, then asserting those desires and ambitions is the way you try to be true to yourself. So self-assertion becomes the only way of self expression. If you simply assert your own desires, you may have the illusion of being true to yourself. But in fact all your efforts to make yourself more real and more yourself have the opposite effect: they create a more and more false self.This self assertion is false because it cuts you off from other people. (Abbot Christopher Jamison, ‘Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life’ (London: Phoenix, 2007) p.85

The discipline set out in the Rule of St. Benedict should never be seen as an end in and of itself for that is a distortion of his intention. Discipline is used in order to steer the monk into a space where they can discover deep truths, hidden from others; it is this space of encounter with God which is the goal. Last week we discussed how cravings for satisfaction can drive us from real discoveries and here it is our inner chatter which is the distraction. Enforcing silence is to create an atmosphere where we are forced to face the silence, to fight through the dread and fear to discover the resurrecting new life beyond the deepest darkness and silence.

Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfilment of my existence. Therefore there is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation’ (New York: New Directions, 1972) p.35-36)

The call to true silence is a dangerous journey and should not be rushed into. It is a treacherous path which requires, like all journeys, preparation, the right equipment and knowledge of the route. It doesn’t take much reading on contemplative prayer to know that this is a calling reserved for experienced and specific disciples. This doesn’t deny the rest of us an experience or a seeking after a form of silence but we tread that path with caution.
The rise of mindfulness classes, particularly in urban centres, concerns me. The basis of this, as far as my reading and experience shows, is based in focussing on self and creating a form of vacuum in which to exist. The danger with this, in spiritual terms, is that with no direction we can be seized by anything; demons, destructive thought, wayward emotions, call them what you like. In this way it is as Jesus describes it,

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his castle, his property is safe. But when one stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away his armour in which he trusted and divides his plunder…
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.” (Luke 11:21-26)

To return to Thomas Merton’s words, we all seem so desperate to find our true self but this only exists in the existence of God and so, if we want to gaze on our true self, we must gaze on God. The abyss that we discover if we silence the inner chatter should not remain empty for into the vacuum will flood all manner of thing and in the place where mindfulness takes you you’re defenceless against the slippery darkness that can easily overwhelm. God abhors a vacuum and we must, if we are to engage in this sort of prayer, to invite God to fill it; even if it is with ‘the cloud of unknowing’ (a classic on this subject).

This is where the reading of suitable material aids the community into an atmosphere of silence. It may seem contradictory to say, in one breath, be silent, and in the other listen to readings from ‘the Collations, the Lives of the Father or something else uplifting.’ For those of us who struggle with the silence and are not equipped to defend ourselves in the darkness of our own souls, filling the silence with directional material to guide us the treacherous path to the edge of pure silence to gaze on God is considerably helpful.

Reflection

True silence is hard to achieve for it is a form of death. In the centre of it we all discover the existence of God who grants, by knowing Him, knowing our true self, ‘in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfilment of my existence.’

Sometimes prayer, meditation and contemplation are “death” – a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance… Then as we determine to face the hard realities of our inner life, as we recognise once again that we need to pray hard and humbly for faith, he draws us out of darkness into light. (Thomas Merton, ‘Contemplative Prayer’ (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005) p.40)

The path to such discovery is a dangerous journey and should not be entered into lightly or without the right spiritual equipment for the task. There are unfriendly foes to battle with, snares and stumbling blocks which can cause you immense damage and pain.

In the context of parish life this form silence is not to be completely ignored rather we should be practising it in order that we can control our inner chatter like we need to control our inner cravings. Discipline in prayer and contemplation leads us to discovery of who we are in God and is therefore, the path to the new life we proclaim.

Creating guided space to begin the process of entering into the silence is essential for nay Christina community. This should be, in my mind, begun with concentrated reading of ‘uplifting’ material: Scripture or spiritual classics such as the Collations or the Life of the Fathers. Each disciple who commits to exploring the inner life must be accompanied by an experienced traveller and these should be made available to each in the form of small groups leaders.

In this way we can begin to form our life together around prayer and study as we resource ourselves for mission and worship.

God of the silence, I invite you into the poverty and emptiness of my life to fill it with your presence by your Holy spirit. Fill the dust of my existence like you did in the very beginning. May I, my false self, decrease as you, my true identity, increase. I step into the silence fearful for it is your awesome presence I seek to gaze upon; that same presence which Moses desired and you blessed him by walking by Him.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 38: the weekly reader

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No whispering or noise is to be heard, only the sound of the reader.

Why silence?

It is a sign of God’s grace and goodness that in a week which began with a blessed retreat with close confidantes as means of recovering from mental illness but before I can fully say I’m back to fitness, He grants that I have a relatively straight forward passage from the Rule of St. Benedict. Whilst on retreat I was able to apply my mind to theological study and reading and have made much needed headway on my writing project (which has been on the back burner for some months now!)

This week’s chapter outlines St. Benedict’s vision for meal times: silent and prayerful. This flies in the face of our culture’s understanding of meal times. It is a current trend within the life of the Church to have food and fellowship (they always go together!) In our church, the youth work is centred around a shared meal where we chat and find out about each other. I’d feel pretty insulted if someone judged what we did at these times of eating as ‘idle chatter’ because the work of relationship is multi layered and complex with use of various means of communication; ‘chatter’ being just one of them.

Having said that, there is a need in the specific example of our youth group and in the general point of meal times for more awareness of listening. Where, in our culture, do we encourage one another to be silent with others?

On my retreat with close friends we spent several times in silence. They were not long but they were rich. I treasured the times when we fell into silence together. Of course it wasn’t pure silence for we were all clearly communicating with God in prayer but it was a wonderful moment to have sat next to people where words did not need to be expressed.

Some of the most beautiful moments I have spent with my wife have been silent (this is not to say that I get bored of the sound of her voice or of what she has to say!) The time that comes to mind is last summer in her hospital room when she was lying staring into space and I sat looking at her. She was very ill and we’d run out of words to express frustration, anger at God, sadness of the situation and ultimately, a way to explain what the future held. Silence was the most appropriate sound and we sang it together beautifully.

As part of my recovery programme, I have embarked, with a counsellor, on Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy. I have looked at mindfulness before but in the context of contemplative prayer exercises. For me, mindfulness is a form of contemplation; contemplation on the present moment and where it is being punctuated by God’s grace and mercy. I’m reminded of Thomas Merton’s description of contemplative prayer,

Contemplative prayer is, in a way, simply the preference for the desert, for emptiness, for poverty… Contemplation is essentially a listening in silence, an expectancy. (Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005)p. 111-112)

One of the exercises for this week is to be intentionally conscious of the process of eating; to eat a meal and be aware of the texture of the food, the sensation of the need to swallow and the echoes of taste on the tongue. It is in this exercise that I am aware of the power and need for silence at meal times.

We must be careful, however, to remove the Rule of St. Benedict from its context. If we are to truly reflect on how the Rule may be utilised in a current, un-cloistered culture then we must ask some important questions. For this particular part of the Rule it would foolish to blindly take the guidance without asking whether there is any worthy benefit of encouraging conversation at meal times.

To go back to the specific example of our youth group: it may be an interesting experiment to try one meal time in silence but the reason we gather round the table is to engage in relationship. We remove all mobile devices and encourage them to connect with others over the very tangible and present reality of food. We have established, after much reflection, prayer and consultation that it is important for our young people (some more than others) to have a place, each week, to sit and have a family meal where they are encouraged to listen and to be heard with no distractions and no where to rush off to. ‘Idle chatter’ at the table is counter cultural for some of them where silence fills their meal times but a silence poor in listening due to the distraction of technology and relationships being fostered remotely.

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The Reader

A brief note on the requirement of quality in public reading:

Coming from an arts background I have often been asked by colleagues and church readers for practical advice and training in how to read effectively. We’ve all been in services or groups where someone goes to read (Scripture particularly) and puts on this strange voice which makes the reading sound as dull as dishwater! They have no passion for what they are reading and/or they have no sense of what the words are saying. The opposite is often just as bad; someone, wanting to make it sound interesting, puts such emphasis on the reading that it becomes comic and (to use a theatrical term) ‘hammy’.

There is a comfortable middle way which is achieved by knowing what it is you’re reading; knowing the specific words and what they mean, knowing the context it was written and the context into which you are reading, to know the genre and general point of the piece. This takes preparation and then certain skills and experience to translate all that knowledge into your voice to communicate beyond words the meaning of the words.

With these skills, developed through experience and training, words are open to having life breathed into them and are then able to change people’s lives. It is these trained or experienced people, who have gone thorough a process of reflecting on their practice, who should be encouraged to stand up in public and read for it is in their ‘ministry’ that people will be invited to hear and respond to what is being read for the building up of their souls.

Reflection

Part of my theological study whilst on retreat was to bring together my years of thinking around the need for a new form ecclesiology for the Church of England; one that would encourage and grow discipleship amongst our people. Part of the solution, I believe, can be found in the discoveries of the New Monastic movement. It was Alan Roxburgh who wrote,

Discipleship emerges out of prayer, study, dialogue and worship by a community learning to ask the questions of obedience, as they are engaged directly in mission. (Alan Roxburgh, Missionary Congregation, Leadership and Liminality (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 1997) p.66)

I love that vision for the church: to be a place of ‘prayer, study, dialogue and worship’. Often the church, I find, devalues study; individuals palm their responsibility off to academics and the local congregation is starved of intellectual rigour as it gets trapped in the academy. I’m reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observations of the monastic movement before the Reformation,

Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists, the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard – a maximum and a minimum standard of Christian obedience. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995) p.47)

Although Bonhoeffer is discussing the complete task of discipleship I see a distinct lack of study within modern congregations. Not only do they resist participating in it but they belittle its worth to justify their lack of desire for it. There is a common thought that you don’t need to study to grow in discipleship, there is no need to wrestle with difficult questions or, if you do need to, it is to be done by understanding how you feel rather than learning how to think. This develops into teaching which is authorised solely by emotional feeling rather than intellectual truths.

There needs to be a place where a community learns to sit in silence and listen to teaching and to listen with their hearts as well as their ears; to receive teaching and the wisdom of the Church, to be challenged to grow and to be inspired to study the words and works of God. This study needs to be shaped and directed so that we do not fall into heresy and worldly wisdom.

Yes, there is a place for discussion and dialogue but where are the times of silent study, together, as a community?

Teacher, you taught us that there is no other teacher but you and so we commit to sitting at your feet and receiving bread from heaven, every word that comes from your mouth. We want to learn how to be expectant to hear from you, to answer your invitation to enter the desert, to be emptied, to become poor in order to meet with you, to be filled by your Spirit and to be rich in knowledge and love of you.

Come, Lord Jesus.

50 Questions

I have gone through many seasons of journal writing over the years. Each season brings a different approach and style. Some have been noting down words of encouragement or discernment, whilst other times I have, in Anne Frank style, written to my own ‘Kitty’. I have used this site at times for public journalling and have vulnerably wrestled with the morality of such practice. As I tried out different forms of writing I have been on that constant search for a voice which I feel comfortable with. The voice which I can use to interact with the world around me.

Just before New Year’s Eve, I came across an article by Sonia Simon entitled ‘The New Year’s Writing Resolution You Can Actually Keep’. (I am grateful to Maggi Dawn for reposting it.) So for a week I have been writing for 20 minutes a day. I have not concerned myself with grammar, spelling, editting, format, style; I have just put pen to paper and written what came into my head in the way that appears to quickest.

I decided to use an old book I started journalling in at the end of June 2013 whilst on retreat. Reading back over the last week and the three or four entries prior to that I have been encouraged to hear a definite style appearing:

Short sentences. Adjective triplets and, of course, rhetorical or open ended questions.

I have even begun, after just a week, seen some themes surfacing from the pages and I am excited to see what other material reveals itself over the coming weeks and months.

I do, however, want to share the questions which seem to be buzzing round my head. They are not necessarily connected, although I’m sure connections can easily be made. They are not necessarily ‘unanswered’ in that I may already know the answers but I still need to ask them. This is essentially what I’m realising about the ‘style’ I seem to write in…

Questions invite. Questions inspire. Questions invoke within us imagination and, instead of just filling the world with more noise and another voice clambering to be heard, questions accentuate silence, however brief.

But there is a balance to be made.

A friend brought to my attention the following YouTube clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4#t=171

The man is right, of course. I have noted, many times this vocal tick our culture has developed. He is right to ask whether ‘we are the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since, you know, a long time ago.’? Are we so wary of standing up and declaring something and pinning our metaphorical colours to the mast that we fall too swiftly into the open question format? (He asks ironically!)

With that in balance I offer some questions, asked from a place of vague certainty and with no agenda but to invite, inspire and invoke from within you, my dear reader, your own imagination and to accentuate some the silence from which all truth is birthed.

1. Who do I trust?

2. Where is my ego’s adversary?

3. I am Frodo fighting the Ring of my own ego; where is my Sam?

4. Why has God called me?

5. Has God called me?

6. Is my ministry just another successful imagination exercise; my ability to construct and fabricate a fantasy, incarnating a wish so people believe it to be true and I get what I want?

7. Where do I go from here?

8. If I seek comfort how can I be sure that I’m not shying away from ego-death?

9. What do I mean by ‘falling on the mercy of God’, when and where does it come and in what form?

10. What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? (Psalm 50:16)

11. What drives me to speak so much in public?

12. How do I control/bridle my tongue, this fire?

13. Why do I still feel unsettled?

14. Why does the Lord call us to remember?

15. Are my expectations too high?

16. Are they unrealistic?

17. Is it wrong to feel like I’m in ‘hell’ and, on some level, enjoying it?

18. Where will I find Him?

19. When will He appear?

20. What is He doing?

21. Where are the links; the logical sequences?

22. How does a Being so distinct from me communicate with me?

23. How does He draw near to me?

Hide-and-Seek-Game 24. What is an encounter with the ‘hidden’ God like?

25. Can God hide?

26. When will the game be over?

27. What ends the game: to find the unfindable person?

28. Is there a place in my house which would be good for writing?

29. Do I seek to be different?

30. Do I get a kick out of standing out from the crowd?

31. ‘The community of the lost and finding’; I wonder what that would look like?

32. Is that what God is opening up for me in my situation?

33. What will bring peace to all the voices we try to hold together?

34. Would it be possible to do stand up comedy as a ‘vicar’?

35. How do I get rid of this painful cramp in my hand? (I have since discovered it is called ‘mogigraphia’. Thank you, @yrieithydd)

36. Is my pedantry, in anyway useful?

37. Can God do something with it?

38. Is He rather wanting to help me shed it from my character?

39. What am I expecting in 2014?

40. What am I hoping for in 2014? (Thank you to Luke Bacon for those last two.)

41. If the future cannot change then where is the hope of transformation of oneself and creation as a whole?

42. What would a spiritual discipline of foolishness look like?

43. Is God the only being able ‘to humble Himself’ (Philippians 2:8)?

44. Can one humble themselves?

45. Is it not an act done to you rather than done by you?

46. Where does the difficulty to speak in popular images come from?

47. Why do I feel they are too ‘…and that’s a bit like Jesus.’?

48. Why am I not excited or pleased to be doing this work?

49. Is my heart in God’s hand, attuned to His pulse?

50. How can one tell if the work you are doing is the work He has for you?

Breaking the Silence?

After a break of about four months I thought I might re-start a discipline of blogging. I took a break for a number of reasons: I was writing and constructing a book which took up a lot of my head space. Once that was finalised I had to pick up all the thinking and processing I missed out on for creative worship events at college and then, after that, pick up on all the theological and academic head gymnastics involved in reading and writing for essays on a number subjects!

So here we are and what is it we have to talk about?

I guess this is an appropriate topic of conversation for me to consider after a period of digital silence; where does one begin breaking the silence with an expression?

In the digital space, if we can in fact talk of it as a ‘space’, silence as ‘nothingness’ is achievable, much more so than in the physical/ ‘real’ world. For those who know me only as the character behind the words on this site will believe me to have either ceased to exist or, at least, paused; frozen in time and this space we share. The truth is I never ceased to exist; I merely existed in a different form.

Silence in the physical world is often thought of, primarily, from speaking. If one speaks of another as ‘being silent’ they mean the other has stopped talking but, as many of us know, expression is only fractionally dependent on spoken words, there’s body language, facial expression, etc.. There’s also the strange phenomenon of the ‘not-saying’ saying much more; the sub text or the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’!

In the theatre world, particularly the physical theatre genre, there’s a theory, cited by Jacques LeCoq, which states all expression must begin from ‘silence’. This silence involves, as much as possible, both vocal silence and physical silence. The vocal silence is achievable but the physical is more complex. As physical beings we say something by just possessing space. If I stand before you I will communicate something, my existence, for a basic example.

How do we silence our physical expression?

LeCoq outlines a process of the ‘neutral mask’, establishing an homogenous physicality by acknowledging our individual idiosyncrasies and attempting to put them aside aqnd thus achieving a form of silence from self-expression (the expression of one’s self). The silencing of our physical expression,however, is, one must admit, impossible. LeCoq’s neutral mask, therefore, is achieving silence of self-expression and so true silence is a desire never to be achieved.

Here’s the rub; the theatre world has to conclude that we can never create ex nihilo (out of nothing). We are always reshaping what is already there. I have spoken before (see ‘An Idea! (part II)’ post) about the human being’s inability to ‘create’ in the same way as God created (bara in the Hebrew). Our expressions stem from the past for we are all caught in the continuum of space and time and we cannot transcend that.

So from the attempt of silence comes an understanding of, first, the present and then, naturally, the past; what has caused this moment to exist. We can dwell for eternity in the past but there is a spiritual discipline of forcing ourselves forward again into the present. The difficulty is we often push too hard and end up landing in the potential future (see ‘The Futre Doesn’t Exist/Everybody’s Free‘ post). The present is ‘tense’; a delicate balance between past and future. In this tension, creative energy begins but it is not creative in the sense of beginning something new but rather a shaping of what is already there.

What’s being hinted at here? I’m currently striving towards a theory which unites an emergent monist view of the human being with a belief in a ‘spiritual’ God or, if this is not possible, proposing, by discovering the lack of unity in these thoughts, a deeper understanding of an incarnated God.

I am not totally sold on an emergent monistic view which states that there is no ‘soul’ but rather a mind which has emerged from complex physical process of protons, neurons, etc.. The reason is because of its implications on our view of resurrection and of the ‘spiritual realm’. I am, however, uncomfortable with a dualistic view of the world because of it’s implications on our view of ourselves. My view is that dualism, naturally, leads one to view the self as, in some way, separate from the physical person and that the ‘true self’ is a static or distinct entity existing prior to the body and, therefore, not connected with the physical world. The incarnation leads me to consider the entanglement of self in with the physical and that God’s plan was never to create this world for us to visit only to return to ‘the homeland’ but to create a world for us to inhabit fully.

From the place of ‘attempted-silence’ an expression is made of past, present and potential future colliding. The vista opens up again and the unity of the cosmos is understood and questioned simultaneously. Let us dwell together in this place to contemplate and develop together.

(Read my digi-disciple posts on this topic, 28^th of each month, and look forward to my contribution to Transpositions’ symposium on Art, Embodiment and the Digital)