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.