The Silence is Deafening!

As a person who has made a living from public speaking, it is very difficult for me to keep quiet. Stillness and silence have not been anything but natural or comfortable for me over the years. So as I learn more about Buddhist practices and eastern understandings of prayer, which put a tremendous emphasis on silence and contemplation, I have been challenged to my very core.

One of the weekly activities that our fledgling Living Vision community is a time of silence and contemplative prayer on Thursday evenings from 6:30-7:30 pm at a wonderful little chapel in Bay View. A few of us show up, exchange greetings and brief updates on our weeks, and then get on to the business of shutting up. It is not as easy as it sounds. Being quiet on the outside is a whole lot easier than being quiet on the inside. My mind races in an almost non-stop fashion all day long, kicking into an even higher gear when I slow down enough to lay down or be still. The discipline of silence and contemplative prayer brings all such racing thoughts to a deafening crescendo,as if someone is screaming at me from the inside.

The discipline of silence has taught me that my mind does not want to be quiet. It does not want to be controlled or limited in any way. My mind, quite bluntly, wants to rule me rather than be ruled by me. But if I allow my mind to have its way – as I have for the vast majority of my life – where will the space and quiet be for the still small voice of the Spirit to speak and be heard? When the mind runs without ceasing, there is no room for God’s voice to be heard, which means that for the vast majority of my life – yes, even and especially my life as a minister – I have not been able – even when I was willing – to hear the voice of God.

When I first began practicing this discipline of silence, I mistakenly thought that the point was to have profound revelations from God, to hear his voice each time I kept quiet long enough to do so. But the longer I practice and the more I listen to the experiences of my fellow journeyers, the more I realize that what I’m really doing is training my mind to learn to silence itself, to stop spinning ceaselessly, to stop controlling me with its relentless and often frivolous noise. If I am to renew a right spirit within me, I must first develop a core of quiet within which I can access whenever and wherever I need to, a place of deep peace out of which I may operate in an all-too-noisy world.

Several years ago I was teaching a confirmation class, and I asked my students to write in their own words what they believed about God, Jesus, and the Spirit. One student said the “The Holy Spirit gives us nudges and urges to do the things Jesus did.” I like that; I find myself coming back to it again and again. That definition of the Spirit’s work motivates me to keep practicing the often dry and revelation-less discipline of silence so that I might be more apt to feel those nudges and listen to those urges. Whether or not God ever speaks to me during these actual times of silence on Thursday nights is becoming less and less the point. Gaining control over my mind and creating a truly quiet place within me seems far more important to the on-going transformation of my mind, heart, and soul.

Thanks to Tim Pickett, Nancy-Laurel Pettersen, and the other Living Vision folks who are guiding me on this profound journey into silence, I am actually beginning to look forward to this discipline each week. Please come and join us any Thursday evening at 6:30 over at the Crouse Chapel in Bay View, right next to the post office. Don’t worry if you’ve never done this sort of silent meditation before. We’re all learning together and we usually start with a little 5 minute period of instruction for all of our sakes. See you soon!