Week #8 – Silence

Invocation:
O God, my Father, I have no words by which I dare express the things that stir within me. I lay bare myself, my world, before you in quietness. Watch over my spirit with Your great tenderness and understanding and judgment, so that I will find, in some strange new way, strength for my weakness, health for my illness, guidance for my journey. This is the stirring of my heart, O God, my Father. Amen.

Scripture Reading: Psalm 8

Daily Scripture Reading:
Monday Revelation 3:20-22
Tuesday James 3:1-12
Wednesday Ecclesiastes 5:1-3
Thursday 1 Kings 19:9-13
Friday Psalm 46
Saturday John 10:1-15
Sunday Habakkuk 2:20

Selections For Meditation:

Personal Meditation

Prayer
There is much to be said in the Christian life; but it is God who is to do the speaking. Pray for silence both in mind and spirit so that you may hear His voice. If He spoke to you in a whisper, would you be quiet enough to hear Him?

Hymn: “Still, Still With Thee”

Still still with Thee,
When purple morning breaketh,
When the bird waketh,
And the shadows flee;
Fairer than morning,
Lovelier than the daylight,
Dawns the sweet consciousness,
I am with Thee.

So shall it be at last,
In that bright morning
When the soul waketh,
and life’s shadows flee;
Oh, in that hour,
fairer than day-light dawning,
Shall rise the glorious thought —
I am with Thee.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe-

Benediction:
Come, Lord, and speak to my heart. Communicate to it Your holy will, and mercifully work within it both to will and to do according to Your good pleasure. Alas! How long shall my exile be prolonged? When shall the veil be removed which separates time from eternity? When shall I see that which I now believe? When shall I find what I seek? When shall I possess what I love, which is You, O my God! Grant, O Jesus, that these holy desires with which you now inspire me, may be followed by that eternal happiness which I hope for from Your infinite mercy. Amen.
-Thomas a’ Kempis-

Selections For Meditation:

* Unfortunately, in seeing ourselves as we truly are, not all that we see is beautiful & attractive. This is undoubtedly part of the reason we flee silence. We do not want to be confronted with our hypocrisy, our phoniness. We see how false and fragile is the false self we project. We have to go through this painful experience to come to our true self. It is a harrowing journey, a death to self — the false self — and no one wants to die. But it is the only path to life, to freedom, to peace, to true love. And it begins with silence. We cannot give ourselves in love if we do not know and possess ourselves. This is the great value of silence. It is the pathway to all we truly want. This is why St. Benedict speaks of silence as if it were a value in itself: for the sake of silence.
-From A Place Apart by M. Basil Pennington-

* Silence is the very presence of God — always there. But activity hides it. We need to leave activity long enough to discover the Presence — then we can return to activity with it.
Stillness is present throughout the run at every point. But if one only runs, he never knows stillness.
God is present in all beings, but we will never be aware of Him if we never stop and leave behind all beings to be to Him.
-From O Holy Mountain! by
M. Basil Pennington-

* Not long ago the religion instructor at a Christian high school decided to introduce silent meditation into one of his classes. He gave the students instructions simply to “be” during the silence: to be relaxed and awake, open to life as it is, with nothing to do but appreciate whatever comes. Week by week he slowly increased the amount of time to a maximum of 10 minutes.
The student response was very revealing. One boy summarized a general feeling of the class: “It is the only time in my day when I am not expected to achieve something.” The response of several irate parents was equally revealing: “It isn’t Christian,” said one. “I’m not paying all that tuition for my child to sit there and do nothing,” proclaimed another.
How is it that 10 minutes of silence can be so special to some and so threatening to others?
-From Spiritual Friend by Tilden H. Edwards-

* As there are definite hours in the Christian’s day for the Word, particularly the time of common worship & prayer, so the day also needs definite times of silence, silence under the Word and silence that comes out of the Word. These will be especially the times before and after hearing the Word. The Word comes not to the chatterer but to him that holds his tongue. The stillness of the temple is the sign of the holy presence of God in His Word.
There is an indifferent, or even negative, attitude toward silence which sees in it a disparagement of God’s revelation in the Word. This is the view which misinterprets silence as a ceremonial gesture, as a mystical desire to get beyond the Word. This is to miss the essential relationship of silence to the Word. Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father’s room. We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us. We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God. We keep silence solely for the sake of the Word, and therefore not in order to sho disregard for the Word but rather to honor and receive it.
Silence is nothing but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing. But everybody knows that this is something that needs to be practiced and learned, in these days when talkativeness and noise prevails. Real silence, real stillness, really holding one’s tongue, comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness.
-From Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer-

* The disciplined person is the person who can do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. The mark of a championship basketball team is a team that can score the points when they are needed. Most of us can get the ball in the hoop eventually but we can’t do it when it is needed. Likewise, a person who is under the discipline of silence is a person who can say what needs to be said when it needs to be said. “A Word filly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11). If we are silent when we should speak, we are not living in the discipline of silence. If we speak when we should be silent, we again miss the mark.
-From Celebration of Discipline by
Richard J. Foster-

* For as long as I can remember, I have not feared silence but welcomed it as a source of spiritual deepening. Like other people living in the world, I’ve grown accustomed to the noise in my place of work, to the raucous sounds of the city, to the inner disquiet stirred up by busy thoughts and earnest projects. Silence can be an escape from the functional responsibilities and physical demands of listening and conversing with colleagues, friends and family members. But it can also be an opening to God.
A common problem related to why we may seek to escape silence, is the discovery that it evokes nameless misgivings, guilt feelings, strange, disquieting anxiety. Anything is better than this mess, and so we flick on the radio or pick up the phone and talk to a friend. If we can pass through these initial fears and remain silent, we may experience a gradual waning of inner chaos. Silence becomes like a creative space in which we regain perspective on the whole.
-From Pathways of Spiritual Living by
Susan Annette Muto-

* It is necessary that we find the silence of God not only in ourselves but also in one another. Unless some other person speaks to us in words that spring from God and communicate with the silence of God in our souls, we remain isolated in our own silence, from which God tends to withdraw. For inner silence depends on a continual seeking, a continual crying in the night, a repeated bending over the abyss. If we cling to a silence we think we have found forever, we stop seeking God and the silence goes dead within us. A silence in which He is no longer sought ceases to speak to us of Him. A silence from which He does not seem to be absent, dangerously threatens His continued presence. For He is found when He is sought and when He is no longer sought, He escapes us. He is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if, thinking our hope to be fulfilled, we cease to listen, He ceases to speak, His silence ceases to be vivid and becomes dead, even though we re-charge it with the echo of our own emotional noise.

Contradictions have always existed in the soul of man. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.
Silence, then, belongs to the substance of sanctity. In silence and hope are formed the strength of the Saints (Isaiah 30:15).
-From Thoughts in Solitude
by Thomas Merton-