An Invitation to Silence

the silence

Holds with its gloved hand

The wild hawk of the mind.

-Excerpt from “The Untamed” by R.S. Thomas

I love Medieval Times.  

This will probably come as no surprise to most of you who know what a big nerd I am about the Middle Ages and The Lord of the Rings and all things fantasy.  But, yes, I (a grown man) really do get a kick out of that grand old dinner-and-a-joust place out there in Schaumburg: knights and horses, swords and banners and…the falcon.  The falcon is maybe my favorite part of the whole thing.  The falconer comes out alone with the falcon - this beautiful bird of prey - perched on his glove and then he releases it to fly about the arena, chasing lures at breakneck speed and swooping down over the crowd with near-supernatural grace.   It’s magical.

I found the line quoted above in a poem by the great Welsh priest and poet R.S. Thomas and it captured my Medieval-Times-loving imagination.   The image of a mind as the wild bird flying about and silence as the gloved hand of the falconer holding it at rest.  

What role does silence play in your life?

If you’re anything like me, your days are full of noise.  Words to be read on screens and devices, chatter on TV, podcasts and music to listen to, texts and to-do lists and email to be attended to, saying nothing of the anxious or busy thoughts occupying our minds.  It is hard to just sit in quiet when there is so much to listen to and read and think and do.  But many, many of the great spiritual masters of the great spiritual traditions of the world counsel the practice of intentional silence.  Not just sitting and brooding or thinking through your grocery list.  Trying to cultivate real stillness.   Sitting and breathing, letting thoughts pass by like clouds over a mountain side.

For the Christian tradition of intentional silence, this practice is about entering into the presence of God and listening to God.  Quieting our busy minds and our shouting thoughts to be open to God as God, unmediated.  But we find that when we try to do that - if indeed we ever do try to do this - we are greeted by all the lurking chaos of our thoughts and anxieties crowding in on us.  What the Buddhists call “monkey mind.”  Thomas’s “wild hawk.”

Pope Leo’s Augustinian brother Martin Laird wrote what I consider to be the best book on the Christian practice of silence (Into the Silent Land).  He says this about the difficulties of sitting in silence:

“This is why most people do not stick with a contemplative discipline for very long; we have heard all sorts of talk about contemplation delivering inner peace but when we turn within to seek this peace, we meet inner chaos instead of peace. But at this point it is precisely the meeting of chaos that is salutary…The peace will indeed come, but it will be the fruit, not of pushing away distractions, but of meeting thoughts and feelings with stillness instead of commentary. This is the skill we must learn.”

If you’ve made it this far in this ramble of mine (or if you finish it) you’re maybe going to think to yourself “silence like that sounds nice” and then never try it.  Or maybe you’ll try it once and get frustrated by your inability to quiet your thoughts.   Or perhaps you’ve already decided that intentional silence is fine and dandy for professional spiritual types like priests or monks or for people who are very spiritual already (like that aunt of yours who does yoga and goes on retreats) but not for you.  This is where you’re wrong.  Silence is for everyone.  Available, like God, at all times and in all places. 

I am convinced our world would be a better place almost immediately if every human being spent 20 minutes a day in silence.

September is when life in our part of the world tends to get busy again after whatever peace and rest we’ve cobbled together in the summer months.  And I’m intentionally not writing to you today about all the stuff coming up here at St. Elisabeth’s this fall.   Those notices are all right here in The Voice and I hope you’ll read them and join us for the events advertised.  But for now…I invite you to try sitting somewhere in silence for 20 minutes.  Set a timer if you want to.  The rest of this newsletter will keep for 20 minutes.  Your life will keep for 20 minutes.  Go sit in silence with God.  And then do it again tomorrow and the day after - or at least whenever life feels like too much.  Breathe deeply.  Don’t fight the thoughts. 

Acknowledge them and let them go.  Let the weather pass over the mountain of your mind.

Let the grace of that silence hold the wild hawk of your thoughts with its gloved hand for a time, before that untamable bird brain soars abroad again.

Faithfully,

The Rev. Adam Spencer, Rector