onehouse

Mute, not silent.

Someone sent this to me and yes indeed, I verily heretofore and thus and so like it:

There is a silence that communicates more than any word; there are words that say nothing. These are not words but merely noises; words without sense, making sound but with no effect, are just noise...but there is no silence that has no meaning. That which has no meaning is mute, not silent."

~Michele Federico Sciacca

Perhaps the earth...

Lisa sent me this from inward/outward. Nice closing thoughts for this week:

Keeping Quiet
Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Source: translated by Alistair Reid in Extravagaria

Advent - 2nd Sunday

The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and, when he is "answered," it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.

The Climate of Monastic Prayer
Thomas Merton

On this second Sunday of Advent, my friend Antony reminds me that it is the anniversary of Merton's death. I re-read the poem I found a few weeks ago, sit in silence and think of great clouds of witnesses.

Random Lent thoughts.

“Sometimes you have to fight the razzle with some dazzle.”
Reverend Lovejoy as he reaches for his electric guitar.

As I was waiting for my appointment with my spiritual director, I read a little something in the local paper on four staff writers giving something up for lent or "lent-like" as they put it. This paper is always predictably trite and the writing is poor so I wasn't expecting Dostoevsky. I also realize that people come to spiritual  practices in layers. Sometimes a so-called retreat is done just so someone can re-energize and pick up their life exactly where they found it. There is no other depth to it. That may be their introduction to retreat or it may never go any further than a stop-gap interruption to life as they know it and want it. (It's like an ONION see, an ONION...sorry, couldn't resist. MMM, onion soup.)

My first introduction to the practice of silence came over ten years ago. I was writing an article on silence and solitude which had me spend 24 hours at a retreat centre. I  quickly came face to face with my inner noise and it was not pleasant. At that time I could not have imagined my current embrace of silence and solitude. Something that was once so irritating has now become consistently sustaining and life-giving.

I think when we first engage some of these practices, they begin to pull us apart and force us to face things within ourselves that we didn't know were there. Some of the practices bring out fear -  witness the nasty people tossing the word "Eastern" around like a swear word or the church services on "silence" packed end to end with media and noise - because they engage parts of us we may have denied over the years. My irritation with this trite little newspaper article on giving things up for Lent slowly melted into a relaxed giggle. At least, someone was giving Lent a second thought and though not exactly in spirit of the thing, like a bad homework assignment, it might lead them to another layer ten years down the road.

I'd show you the article from ten years ago but sharing decade old writing is the equivalent of showing junior high yearbook photos and I'm not sure we know each other well enough as yet. Be assured - the hair is no longer feathered,  the eye glasses are smaller, and I'm off to the same retreat this week to (now) merrily engage another 24 hours of silence.  Hopefully wiser. Definitely quieter. Pass the onion soup please.

Word

Word
by Madeleine L'Engle
The Weather of the Heart

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.
The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave, returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.
    I, who live by words, am wordless when
    I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen

Sitting still.

I am thinking of the nuances of silence in preparation for Lent. Yes, I know we're a few weeks away but I am a slow learner.

My favorite word of the day email comes from A.Word.A.Day. When introducing the word "dharma", Anu Garg speaks of the  "You don't get it. I do" temptation that comes when practicing different types of formation.

One of the hardest things in life isn't solving complex algebraic equations, it's not coming up with creative campaigns for a new client, it's not conquering a mountain peak. It's to sit still and do nothing.

I recently attended a ten-day meditation retreat. In this residential program one is secluded from the outside world for the first nine days: no email, no cellphones, no reading, no writing. And no talking.

When one sits still and tries to focus, the mind becomes turbulent. It mounts its horse and starts galloping in all directions, north and south, into past and future, to places real and imaginary, and who knows where else. Gradually, though, it does begin to be reined in. There were calmer moments too.

The silence is relieved on the last day. I was one of the last ones to come out of the meditation hall. When I entered the dining area I expected little talk, a gradual easing into the world.

What I encountered instead was a cacophony of talk. I felt I had returned to a world I didn't belong to. What was the normal conversation of a few dozen people sounded to me like the roar of a volcano.

Before the departure for home, I overheard someone in the bathroom area say, "No one had the flow. I know everyone was faking it." For a moment I felt like telling him, "Looks like the program really worked for you. You can already read everyone's state of mind," but I didn't. Maybe he really could. Who was I to say?

30 good minutes

How have I never heard of this before?  30 good minutes has archives of sermons in printed, audio, and video  by a lot of people. Some, I won't spend time on, but wow - Buechner, Chittister, Nouwen, Norris, Peterson, Vanier - just to name a few.

I just watched a ten minute video on Seeking The Interior Life with Chittister and then was able to check the written version. Wonderful. Here's a bit to remember: 

Silence, the contemplative knows, is that place just before the voice of God. It is the void in which God and I meet in the center of my soul. It is the cave through which the soul must travel, clearing out the dissonance of life as we go, so that the God who is waiting there for us to notice, can fill us. A day without silence is a day without the presence of the self.

The pressure and pull of a noisy day denies us the comfort of God. It is a day in which we are buffeted by the world around us and left at the mercy of the clatter and jangle of our own hearts. To be a contemplative we must put down the cacophony of the world around us and go inside ourselves to wait for the God who is a whisper not a storm.

Silence not only gives us the God who is stillness but, just as importantly, it teaches the public self of us what to speak. Then we finally understand what Abba Isidore meant when he said: “Living without speaking, is better than speaking without living...if, however, words and life go hand in hand, ah, that is the perfection of life.”

 

The Art of Conversation: Living Poetry

I have been thinking lately of about the Art of Conversation - how when you first meet someone or get together with an old friend, the words come in a rush, all explanation and stories and the desire to be known. Wonderful times. Necessary times. But not sustainable over days and weeks. Anyone who has experienced deep friendship knows that there must be time spent in quiet spaces. I hear a lot of talk about creating dialogue but I do not know how that can be done without creating silence. I am trying to give up my desire to constantly explain myself and move to being present in my friendships.

I am reading Going on Faith: Writing as a Spiritual Quest. Patricia Hampl writes:

Poetry isn't arranged in lines to look funny; it's set in lines to make you stop-to make sure you put silence, which has its own reality, between each line. Contemplatives, in that respect, live poetry. I don't mean that in a romantic way; they have literally arranged their life in a pattern that exists between expression and silence. It's the silence that lets the reality come in.

During both of my retreats at the monastery there was something unccanny about sitting with a group of people who are eating and not talking. You become ver close to these people without any information passing; I only learned afterward what they did in real life. I found more intimacy in those silent encounters than in the usual way we get to know people, which is by talking and exchanging ideas. We did none of that. The intimacy was based on the fact that we're all human beings, so there's an inevitablility to our connection. It doesn't have anything to do with whether we like the same things or agree with each other. It has to do with the fact we're on the planet together. Pure fellow-feeling.

Creative Silence

An excellent article by Thomas Merton is available online:

Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self. We live in a state of constant semi-attention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of what goes on all the time around us. This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half-diluted: we are not quite “thinking,” not entirely responding, but we are more or less “there.” We are not fully present and not entirely absent; not fully withdrawn yet not completely available. It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything, and we may, in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment. Yet, we derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are “part” of something, although we are not quite able to define what that something is—and probably wouldn’t want to define it even if we could. We just float along in the general noise. Resigned and indifferent, we share semiconsciously in the mindless mind of Muzak and radio commercial which pass for “reality.”

Of course, this is not enough to keep us completely forgetful of the other unwelcome self that remains so largely unconscious. The disquieting presence of our deep self keeps forcing its way almost to the surface of awareness. To exorcise this presence we need a more definite stimulation, a distraction, a drink, a drug, a gimmick, a game, a routine of acting out our sense of alienation and trouble. Then it goes away for the time being and we forget who we are.

All of this can be described as “noise,” as commotion and jamming which drown out the deep, secret, and insistent demand of the inner self.

With this inner self we have to come to terms in silence. That is the reason for choosing silence. In silence we face and admit that gap between the depths of our being, which we consistently ignore, and the surface which is so often untrue to our own reality. We recognize the need to be at home with ourselves in order that we may go out to meet others, not just with the mask of affability, but with real commitment and authentic love.

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And a word to the church (emphasis added):

What is much more serious is Bonhoeffer’s observation that the church itself engaged in too much empty talk. The church, in fighting to preserve and assert it position, seemed to him to make self-preservation an end in itself. The church talked more and more about itself and more and more for itself, less and less for the kingdom. He said the church had “thereby lost its chance to speak a word of reconciliation to mankind and the world at large.” Bonhoeffer foresaw that this would lead the church—all the churches—into a realm of silence, confusion, and apparent helplessness in which “traditional language must perforce become powerless and remain silent.” He wisely saw that the real purpose of this period of relative silence was a deepening of prayer, a return to the roots of our being, in order that out of silence, prayer, and hope we might once more receive from God new words and a new way of stating not our message, but His.

Community and Solitude.

This weekend, I took a trip to Banff to meet with the Church of Guinness at someone's new place and to wish Deegy a fond farewell as he goes to live in Toronto for a year or more. We drank champagne, ate supper and I opened up my bottle of Banyuls, a port-like wine that I brought back from Southern France. It's known as "vin bibliotheque", library wine - a sweet drink meant to be accompanied by dark chocolate and a good book. Deegy brought a really great box of books that we will now put in our contemplative library and as we carve out more and more of a space for others. Hopefully, one day, we'll be able to offer a chair, a quiet place, a cup of tea and of course, I'll have to go back and get some more Banyuls.

When you are so small a group, it is sad to bless someone and send them off to another place. Although our little group does not "hang out" all that much, it is lovely just to see them - to be joyful at the sight of their faces and the sound of their voices. They are each so very beautiful.

You know, too, when you are trying to follow certain paths, that you can't print up a flyer and invite folks to a meeting and there will be a whole bunch of you. You bump into people here and there but there is an inherent balance between a healthy loneliness and a healthy time together. Much of this is birthed out of silence and solitude. As Henri Nouwen wrote in Making All Things New, true community is deeply related to solitude. If we come together with so much sound and fury, so many voices and so many worries, we end up using words as barriers. We have never faced ourselves and so it is difficult to meet another. I think many of us have seen a kind of noisy desperation in groups of folks who can't have a moment of silence, who are so afraid of just letting things be quiet and uncomfortable that they must fill the gap with a song or a joke or a long ramble about how good it is to be together...are we a community now? How about now? And now? Reminds me of that little saying, a carrot cannot grow if it is constantly dug up. Nouwen says, "Through the discipline of community we prevent ourselves from clinging to each other in fear and loneliness, and clear free space to listen to the liberating voice of God."

Community is not just about who is here right now either. I know there are a lot of people who are in isolation. Nouwen says:

Finally, we have to keep in mind that community, like solitude, is primarily a quality of the heart. While it remains true that we will never know what community is if we never come together in one place, community does not necessarily mean being physically together. We can well live in community by being physically alone. In such a situation, we can act freely, speak honestly, and suffer patiently, because of the intimate bond of love that unites us with others even when time and place separate us from them. The community of love stretches out not only beyond the boundaries of countries and continents but also beyond the boundaries of decades and centuries.