on silence [2] - the Presence of Silence

on the silent retreat i lived outside. it didn't rain in n wales for 10 days! but it was cold. so this coat was wrapped around me almost permanently often with hood up. (since i have got back i have found i want to be outside more - in fact the first day i had to get out! i decided that outside is my chapel.) i came to experience silence as something to be enfolded in or by and the coat became more and more a sign of that sense of being wrapped. so in a strange way i think that while this photograph may not be magical in and of itself it is my favourite from the retreat. i had in my mind the phrase 'a cloak to mind your life' which is from a john o donahue blessing...

before i went on silent retreat most people who i mentioned it to said something like 'i could never do that' or that it sounds scary. i realised that all these comments had combined in me to think that i would experience it as difficult. maybe it's because it is unknown, or maybe it is because it's so different to our lives (at least in london), or maybe it is because we think of silence as absence. i found the opposite to be the case. i loved silence. in a way what is there not to love? i had set messages on phone and computer to say i wouldn't be responding, i had left all tasks behind, in fact i had no agenda whatsoever even for prayer, i was in a beautiful place, it was safe with people experienced at navigating silence. i found it like breathing or drinking in - and i was incredibly thirsty after three years pretty much non stop with the start up of pioneer training. of course it took a couple of days to stop twitching (as my guide put it). but it was pleasureable, had an ease about it.

one of the companions in my week was sara maitland's a book of silence. in it she explores silence in a much more radical way and in much more solitude and length of time than i was. it's a fantastic book and i found i identified with many of her experiences albeit in a smaller way. she too did not experience much darkness or difficulty. but one of the things that set her on her quest was wanting to address this thing in peoples minds of silence as absence. she says she found it to be the opposite and in her research others who have navigated silence have found the same. here are a couple of things she says 

As time passes i increasingly realise there is an interior dimension to silence, a sort of stillness of heart and mind which is not a void, but a rich space.

I did not see lack or absence but a positive presence. Silence may be outside or beyond the limits of description or narrative language but that does not necessarily mean that silence is lacking anything. Perhaps it is a real separate actual thing... not a lack of language but other than, different from language; not an absence of sound but the presence of something which is not sound.

i came to call this sense the Presence of Silence. i think it relates rather well to terrence mallick's the love that loves us! it's hard to describe (which i'll probably come back to in another blog post - ineffable) but i sensed this Presence of Silence many times - walking in the hills and snow, sat quietly listening to birdsong on a bench, in the chapel in prayer, walking the labyrinth, and she came to me in dreams which i proably don't normally notice. to give one example each evening was an optional (everything was optional) group silence. at this you simply sat with others in the chapel in silence. the first time i went to that i was late because i had watched the sun go down outside over snowdon (tough eh?!) but here's what i wrote in my journal 

After supper I watched the sun go down - such a beautiful day. So I was late for quiet prayer with the group in the chapel. That silence surprised me - it was weighty, the air was thick  and when people left it thinned...

a thickness, a cloak, a blanket, an almost tangible something in the air - a cloak to mind your life? from now on i know this as the Presence of Silence. 

the irony of this is that my experience of god, of life, of faith in the last few years i would say has been characterised by what i have come to call unknowing. by that i don't mean that i don't know things but i know a lot less than i used to. there is much more mystery at the heart of things. and whereas in my younger years (wow i really do sound old!!!) the experience of the sense of the presence of god was really important, i have now simply set my life's direction to follow in the way of christ and that won't change. i take what epiphanies i am given as gifts on the way but also what i have been given is enough. there is no better story to live a life by. i guess i am no longer adolesecent in my spirituality?! i have tried in my own way to pass through the veil of the senses. so i was very happy for the week's silence to just slow down, to be quiet, to still, to unwind, to be, to be in god, in the world. and not expecting to experience this sense of presence. but i bumped into her almost everywhere i turned! now i am back into london, into life, into noise, i am sure this will evade me but it was an extraordinary tangible thing. i will recognise her more clearly now...

Comments

[Pablo Giacopelli]

Try sitting in silence for 10 minutes each day. No agenda nothing to expect just sit there and enjoy. I usually do it first thing in the morning. It gives me a sense of stillness that stays with me for the rest of the day. Is funny I used to do quiet times as during I was anything but quiet...how things have changed as I realize that by being silent I loose my grip and give room to God to do whatever he wants Ben if that means being silent :-)

[Chris Jefferies]

Thanks for this lovely and helpful post. Here is what came into my mind as I read your words...

Silence! It can be barked as a command by a schoolteacher or a sergeant-major.

Silence! It can be made a law as in the library.

Yet in such silence there may be turmoil, anxiety, frustration, even anguish.

But an inner silence, a silence I have chosen and embraced, that is altogether different.

It's the difference between loneliness (a bad thing) and solitude (a good thing). Out of nothing the Creator created all things. And out of my chosen and self-embraced silence much that is grace and love and peace and joy may spring. In me, for myself. And from me, for others.

Blessed silence. Be still and know that I AM Elohim, Yahweh, Emmanuel.

The Spirit of Christ rests on me in my silence, he lives within me. He rests on me like a dove. But when I'm noisy and churned up and selfish and restless inside he flies up into the rafters and waits for a better time.

He says, 'I stand at the door and knock. Open it and I'll come in and eat and drink with you.'

But he doesn't leave me, ever. He may be outside the door or inside the door, but he's always there. He is there in the rafters of my being, or he is resting upon me and within my heart. My prayer is for peace and silence in my being much more consistently. Rest upon me and within me, Lord. I am quiet now. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Come in, you are so welcome.

Praise you. HalleluYah!

http://scilla.org.uk/

[Martin]

Very moving to read. I read it to Gayle - she said: would you like to do that? What a question... 10 days silence(!) Thanks for posting this, look forward to the follow-ups.

[Shannon]

really beautiful!

[Matt Rees]

Thanks for these reflections Jonny.

[LauraHD]

Ever thought of being a Quaker?

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As an Alpine mountain walker of many trips through the wonderful French, Swiss and Italian mountains - this beautiful poem captures silence in another awesome dimension:

The Most-Sacred Mountain - Eunice Tietjens


SPACE, and the twelve clean winds of heaven,
And this sharp exultation, like a cry, after the slow six thousand steps of climbing!
This is Tai Shan, the beautiful, the most holy.

Below my feet the foot-hills nestle, brown with flecks of green;
and lower down the flat brown plain, the floor of earth, stretches away to blue infinity.
Beside me in this airy space the temple roofs cut their slow curves against the sky,
And one black bird circles above the void.

Space, and the twelve clean winds are here;
And with them broods eternity—a swift, white peace, a presence manifest.
The rhythm ceases here. Time has no place.
This is the end that has no end.

Here, when Confucius came, a half a thousand years before the Nazarene, he stepped, with me, thus into timelessness. The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says:
“On this spot once Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below.”

The stone grows old:
Eternity is not for stones.
But I shall go down from this airy place, this swift white peace, this stinging exultation.

And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round.

Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I shall feel time ravel thin about me;
For once I stood
In the white windy presence of eternity.