Reflections on Silence

The discipline for this week was "silence and awareness of creation." Although Smith puts this discipline at the front of his book, ancient spiritual writers thought of silence (or stillness) as one of the higher-order disciplines, and thus placed it near the end of their manuals. We need not see any contradiction in this, but I think it speaks to a deeper meaning about silence that I'd like to explore.

Silence, to the ancient mind, is a peculiar word called "hesychia." It only appears 4 times in the NT. Once in Acts 22:2 where it communicates a state of preparedness to hear a message, once in 2 Thess 3:12 where it is contrasted (ironically) with idleness and describes the ability to function successfully, and twice in 2 Tim. 2 where it describes a woman's proper place in the assembly (which, by the way, ought to make us re-think this passage, in light of the particular word being used there for 'silence'...).

Being silent, then, means more than just not talking. It means to communicate a stillness of soul--one immune from the constant distractions that disintegrate our lives. Our current media trains us for a different kind of life than that of stillness. Just watch television for 30 minutes. Count the amount of "cuts" a producer makes in any given TV show. I've counted 200+ in just 30 minutes of TV. The idea is that we would get bored with any single, sustained shot--and that if the shot switches, its like the same show is new all over again. But its not that we are just naturally need that much stimulation to maintain interest (though we are certainly inclined to flee boredom like the plague). It's that we are conditioned to function that way.


This kind of life disintegrates us, causes us to be agents of chaos--never settling on any one thing, always just touching the surface of a thousand different things. We never become much of anything. Contrary to this life, Christianity has maintained a tradition of stillness as one of our highest goods. We do so on the pretense that God's presence is found in this stillness, and our spiritual growth is thus brought about and sustained in this stillness.

I struggle just as much as anybody not only to keep up extended times in stillness (not to mentioned focused work in general), but even to begin times of stillness. Its not the kind of thing my fallen body really loves to do, even though I have never regretted it. So allow me to conclude with some thoughts from one of my favorite spiritual writers on silence as an exhortation and teaching for myself and the community:

"The beginning of stillness is to throw off all noise as disturbing for the depth [of the soul]. And the end of it is not to fear disturbances but to remain insensible to them. He, who in actually going out does not go out, is gentle and wholly a house of love. He is not easily moved to speech, and he cannot be moved to anger. The opposite of this is obvious."

"A friend of stillness is a courageous and decisive thought that keeps constant vigil at he doors of the heart, and kills or repels the thoughts that come. He who practices silence with perception of heart will understand this last remark; but he who is yet a child is unaware and ignorant of it."

- From The Ladder of Divine Ascent (by St. John Climacus)

Trustworthy God

We write or tell the story of our life as victors or victims. If we tell our story as the victim, then life is a series of disappointments and trials that have left us discouraged. Somehow in the matrix of the story, our virtue has met an unkind God who failed to bless—who seemed out of the loop when our neck was in one.

If we tell our story as the victor, then life is still a series of disappointments and trials, but they have left us encouraged. In the victor story, the trials are the same, but we see ourselves joined by God who is faithful and true. How can it be that the victim and the victor receive the same life yet experience it so differently? One can see God more clearly than the other.

We are invited in this chapter to shed the false God stories and embrace the God's story of Jesus. Perhaps the preaching series we are in at UA allows us to hear Smith's analysis of the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer tells what we should think about God:

God is near—present.
God is holy—pure.
God rules—powerful.
God cares—provides.
God forgives—pardons.
God rescues—protects.

Jesus gives us a good God narrative. If we allow this Jesus story of God to enter our story, then we will see God obviously active in our lives. We will not have to focus on our predicaments since we are living in God's providence. We will see God at work in so many ways. Even if He has not yet acted in direct response to the need we think most pressing, we will see that God is acting with great power and love in many other arenas of our life. Smith says that some of the ways God is working without our bidding may be more significant than what we think God should be doing for us.

So let us choose to leave victim life and its predicaments for victor life in the providence of our trustworthy God.

Broken Bodies

I appreciated Smith's language about his daughter when he said, "she finally rested her tired body" (or something to that effect, I don't have the book with me). It reminds of several people I know, one of whom is my wife, whose bodies just don't work right. In many respects they experience life as the ups and downs of pain. One day they may feel closer to normal, how they used to feel before, and other days its just a constant struggle to maintain.

There is a certain trend in theological circles to view salvation primarily as a this-worldly kind of thing. I'm really all for that, that's kind of what we're doing when we're reading a book about spiritual disciplines: learning how to be saved, through the work of the Holy Spirit, from our own this-worldly brokenness. But usually when I hear or read something from this persuasion it is at the expense of past other-worldly salvation ideals. Those old ideas about one day going to heaven sound too much like escapism, quietism, and a host of other problems that we could do without today.

But as I encounter people with broken bodies, whose bodies never give them a chance to feel normal; whose bodies stop them from feeling pretty, stop them from feeling capable, stop them from feeling like they can do anything else but survive...as I continue to see this in the elderly and young alike, I believe that the promise of heaven where are bodies are made new is not such a bad idea.

Heaven is a part of God's justice in an vulnerable world. We are made vulnerable: vulnerable to sin, vulnerable to diseases, vulnerable to powers that could care less about us. Many of us will not experience any recompense for this vulnerability and the evils that result from it. Part of God's justice has to be in a Heaven where our bodies are pulled out of the wreckage, held, loved, and made new.

I have this hope for Sierra, and I think its part of God's love and justice to share this hope with those whose bodies and lives are broken. Not in a condescending or thoughtless way, but as the hope that we will all experience the comfort in another world that our lives never afforded us in this one.

Play it again Sam

I've been thinking about how easy it is to go through my daily routine without much awareness. I can get so focused in on what I have to do that day or that week, that I can bypass most every detail that doesn't concern my to do list. I'm learning that it's often a protection for me. I very much identify with what Eddie shared yesterday, the noise and busyness helps us avoid the questions and fears that come up when we're alone.

This morning we had some study/prayer time as a staff, and I was reminded how even my noticing / awareness can become a distraction, a place to hide. What I mean is that it's easy for me to notice something, to think I have it figured out, and thus don't have to think about it anymore. Whether that's how pretty a flower is, the song of a bird, or the point of one of Jesus' parables, I've got it. That is, until something happens...like it did last week for me.

And I'm exposed. I haven't been noticing, I've been checking things off a list. I'm not aware of God's goodness, I'm expecting Him to bless me and do His part while I do mine. The "God is an angry judge" narrative that I thought I'd put behind me rears it's ugly head once again.

And yet:

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning, great is Thy faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23

Once again I hear the Spirit calling me back into His presence, to be silent and still and listen. To be reminded that even nature speaks to the reality that God is good, and no matter what we face, He is with us. Thank you Lord for the grace to learn again what you've shown me so many times, increase my faith and transform me from the inside out.

Dealing with the Noise of Silence

The training exercise for reflecting on the goodness of God is silence. For a borderline extrovert, multi-tasking ball of distraction like me, silence ihas not been seen as a blessing and benefit. When I was a kid, being sent to my room was punishment. Losing my radio or television privileges was punishment. I recharge in noise—or, perhaps, I hide in noise.

I have begun to think that my frenetic nature gives my fears and flaws their hiding place. In the distraction, I find a pseudo-comfort—a false peace. So when I hear: "Be still and know that I am God," I want to counteroffer and ask God if I can meet him in the storm, walk to him on rolling waves, come to him in chaos…and sometimes he meets me in just those places. Still—

Still, there waits a better place to meet God. God waits in the silence of the early morning. God waits in the night, offering a better bedtime blessing than Leno and Letterman can muster. God waits in the solitude of wilderness, the quietness of isolation. This is a very difficult discipline for me because in silence and solitary communion with God, the persons I fear most show up-Satan and myself. Satan shows up to accuse me. I show up with all of my imperfections-the ways I have disappointed myself and others laid bare. The noise of silence is composed of the sound of my busyness and the sound of the evil prosecuting attorney railing against me. Is it noisy like that for you, too?

So my wife Annette tells me to wait in faith through the noise. It will diminish. God will wait for it to subside. Satan will withdraw. The din of the world will quieten. But, she says, the noise comes first. To get to the silence, we must sit with and outlast the noise in faith until the rowdiness of life stills and the devil's charges are overwhelmed by the assurance of grace. It will come. Let us go to the silence.

In The Deep, Dark Place of Our Pain and Sorrow

In chapter two of The Good and Beautiful God, we are invited to think about the problem of evil in the world. Smith's story of the death of his daughter clears our illusions that he does not know enough about loss to feel the contradiction between the goodness of God and the evil in the world.

We know that tension, too. I have stumbled across cemeteries after doing the funerals of babies. My eyes were too filled with tears and my heart of full of pain to walk. I have stood in the viewing room with the wife and family of my best friend with him laid in state in a fine casket. I have held my wife's hand as she went into surgery with questions about her cancer and have held her in my arms after the surgery when all of the pathology was so dark and negative. And my experiences are not as dark and desperate as some. Probably not as difficult as yours as you read this.

Into this same world of pain and faithful doubt, Jesus has a word that we hear in this chapter. Jesus says in Luke 13 that bad people do bad things and that the physics of the world makes accidents possible. Neither of these circumstances argue against the goodness of God. From John 9 Jesus teaches that difficult circumstances are often unrelated to human sin, but do offer the opportunity for the power and love of God to be displayed. The easy equation that sin creates pain and trouble is sometimes correct; but not nearly always. Beware of simple, wrong answers to life's questions.

Here is what we know and pin our hopes on:
God is good-always.
Jesus intercedes for us-always.
The Holy Spirit prays what is unprayable out of us-always.
God will make all things right in due time-for sure.

In the deep, dark place of our pain and sorrow shines the light of God's goodness.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. I believe; help my unbelief.

Spiritual Exercises

So, Sarah and I run 5 times a week.  So far we've run 2 half marathons and one 10K and are looking at some more races to run in the future.  I have come to understand very well the value of exercise in my physical and emotional life.

However, when I hear about spiritual exercise (or spiritual discipline) my mind immediately starts to balk.  Not because I don't think developing a deeper spiritual life is important.  But because for so long I viewed such things as...to be blunt...a waste of time.  Now don't misunderstand, I don't think they are a waste of time.  I just used to feel like that when I was younger.  The reason that I felt that way is the concept of spiritual disciplines always seemed so passive and egocentric.  I associated it with monks cloistered in monasteries ignoring the real world.   As I've grown, I've come to understand that, in truth, some people do use spiritual discipline this way.  A way of imagining themselves as more spiritual, more connected to God, while completely separating themselves from God's work of reaching the lost with the gospel.  However, I have also seen the result of people who are all about "reaching the lost," but who have no spiritual depth to accomplish the task. (Typically, these people don't stay with God's plan too long.)

Smith does well in re-coining the term as "spiritual exercises" noting the active work required as well as their ability through the Spirit to make one a stronger Christian who will be more effective at accomplishing God's will in the world.  It is my prayer for myself that as I progress through this book, I will always keep in front of me that God wants me to develop a stronger spiritual life in order that I may show His glory to world around me.