Sounds If Silence Author Joins Eternal Search For Spiritual Sanity
Commenting recently on the issue of school prayer, a Buddhist monk remarked, “A moment of silence? We don’t need a moment of silence, we need a year of silence.”
Silence is difficult for Americans. Our practical and pragmatic culture fills empty spaces. Not only do we work constantly, but we do two or three things at once. We work watching TV. We exercise catching up with our reading. We take computers on vacation and faithfully check our voice mail.
Even religion is work: committee meetings, fund-raisers and longrange plans occupy more time than worship.
A pervasive Puritan ethic haunts Americans, pushing us to prove our worthiness through work.
The Puritans, however, recognized the importance of silence. For them, work was based in a life of prayer and spiritual introspection.
Sadly, Americans have retained the impulse to work while jettisoning the call to pray.
A year ago I attended a retreat. Longing for silence, I was disappointed with a weekend full of preachy presentations, inane music and sophomoric activities. We didn’t even have separate rooms. Rather, we slept in a long corridor with only curtains affording privacy.
Especially troubling to me was one woman who seemed constitutionally unable to be quiet. An army officer, she awoke at dawn. Her booming voice promptly summoned everyone to join her. The more outrageous the activity, the more she liked it.
One evening, I arrived at dinner only to find myself seated opposite this woman. “Oh no,” I groaned inwardly, “what in the world can I talk about with her?”
Gathering all the poise I could muster I asked, “Where’s the most interesting place you’ve been stationed?”
“Antarctica,” she responded.
“Good heavens, what did you do there?”
“Not much. It was pretty difficult.”
Then, she told me a remarkable story.
She was sent to survey part of the continent with only two other people. Waking one morning before her companions, she went outside and looked around.
There was nothing. Miles of vast, white emptiness. Breathless, she was overcome by the icy blast of silence.
Her voice softened, “It was the most incredible spiritual experience of my life. I found my soul in nothing.”
For centuries, monks and mystics have found their souls in nothing. From a chasm of quiet, wisdom and compassion speak.
One such mystic was Julian of Norwich, who died in 1413. As an anchoress, Julian withdrew completely from the world and lived her life in a small cell attached to a church.
Isolated, Julian learned to see differently. For her, the world and time possessed no meaning apart from a divine gift of love breaking in and through human experience. The world was infinitely small in comparison to God’s infinite love - a love that imbues everything with life and beauty.
All reality, therefore, she saw as a revelation of God’s love.
Because everything is love, she triumphantly proclaimed, “All shall be well. And all manner of thing shall be well.”
We have a difficult time believing all things will be well. Constantly trying to control reality, we imagine ourselves possessors of great knowledge, the center of the universe.
Silence reminds us that we are but small compared to the vastness of the Other.
Controlling stops. Instead, we can rest in the love of that infinite and always speaking silence.
In recent years, Americans have embarked on a frenzied spiritual quest. Through the noise, many people have found their way to silence. In Buddhism, Catholic contemplation, Jewish mysticism and Protestant devotional prayer, men and women are discovering the power of silence.
Nothing seems so out of place in American culture, yet nothing is so desperately needed.
Taking a cue from that Buddhist monk and Julian of Norwich, I’m leaving my computer home this vacation. Maybe I can’t find a year of silence, but a few days might be healing for the soul.
MEMO: Diana Hochstedt Butler holds a doctorate in American religious history. She writes for the Santa Barbara (Calif.) News-Press