a spirituality of silence, stillness and solitude...

It is another cool, gray day in these Berkshire hills, perfect for tending the lawn while pondering emerging insights about silence, stillness and solitude. It begins with words found in Christopher Heurertz's excellent, The Sacred Enneagram re: "a spirituality marked by solitude, silence and stillness." Walking around with those words for a few weeks, I've been wondering how I both practice and avoid them. I've been curious, too about how I embrace and embody each of their discrete differences. 

Few truths take root within me quickly. I know that's not true for others, but I must ponder and flirt, explore and then hide away for a while, listen and test new insights before being ready to make a commitment. The late Jesuit scholar, Ray Brown, used to tell students at Union Seminary that we should always have "walking around time" to let the Spirit do her work within us. "That's what Jesus did," he would smile. "He walked around a lot before teaching and preaching. You should, too." Both the Psalmist and the prophetic poet, Jeremiah, speak of taking time as trusting and resting in the Lord much like trees that are planted by the water. "Blessed are those who delight in the Lord," begins Psalm 1, "for they are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, with leaves that do not wither." 

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green, in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 17: 8)

Over time I have come to trust that if I am anxious then I'm not taking it slow enough to stand on holy ground. Small wonder I resonated with St. Leonard Cohen when he wrote in his seductively spiritual way: "I’m slowing down the tune, I never liked it fast. You want to get there soon, I want to get there last. It’s not because I’m old, it’s not the life I led, I always liked it slow that’s what my momma said." (check it out...)

Letting the question simmer within over time concerning what a true spirituality of solitude, silence and stillness might mean is yielding fruit in its own season. Three clues popped up last week. The first arrived in a FB meme quoting the late Gerald May. It went something like: "Love ripens and matures within us shrouded in the mystery of darkness because if we knew in advance what this love would mean for our lives we would either flee or sabotage it..."

Love's true nature remains forever beyond the grasp of all our faculties. It is far greater than any feeling or emotion and completely surpasses any act of human kindness. It is the one sheer gift of contemplation, completely unattainable by autonomous human effort. The realization of this love always remains mysterious.

My hunch is that this is one of the meanings of silence. It is unknowing. Or trusting the questions with time and grace. Silence embraces waiting. It rests in a sacred emptiness so that at the right time and way a creative Word can be revealed. The second clue came from Richard Rohr who recently in his daily meditation:

One of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life came in 1984 during a journaling retreat in Ohio led by the psychotherapist Ira Progoff (1921–1998). [2] Dr. Progoff guided us as we wrote privately for several days on some very human and ordinary questions. I remember first dialoguing with my own body, dialoguing with roads not taken, dialoguing with concrete memories and persons, dialoguing with my own past decisions, and on and on. I learned that if the quiet space, the questions themselves, and blank pages had not been put in front of me, I may never have known what was lying within me. Progoff helped me and many others access slow tears and fast prayers, and ultimately intense happiness and gratitude, as I discovered depths within myself that I never knew were there. I still reread some of what I wrote over forty years ago for encouragement and healing. And it all came from within me!

And, of course, the silence: emptiness, trust and waiting give birth to the words we need. In an age of too many words, sounds and noises, silence is redemptive. As Rohr writes, it is where our flesh communes with the Spirit in a manner much like the Virgin Mary when the story strengthens our theological symbolism. "Unless we are able to tap into a spirituality of interior poverty, readiness to conceive, and human vulnerability" the words of our tradition become a “mere lesson memorized” as Isaiah puts it (29:13) that “save” (read: heals) no one. 

I know that even as I trust the waiting and honor the emptiness, I also often fill up my life, heart and head with stuff like anxiety, pleasure, sounds, busyness, fear, and tasks to avoid resting. One of my favorite re-workings of Scripture is Eugene Peterson's take on Romans 7:

The power of my inner wound keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, my brokenness is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? 

So, silence as emptiness and waiting; stillness and resting in trust. The third clue that is yielding fruit for me comes from an extended reflection from the late Henri Nouwen and his lessons in spiritual direction. Nouwen observes that at this moment in time, we must distinguish between solitude and privacy. He writes:


In order to understand the meaning of solitude, we must first unmask the ways in which the idea of solitude has been distorted by our world. We say to each other that we need some solitude in our lives. What we really are thinking of, however, is a time and place for ourselves in which we are not bothered by other people, can think our own thoughts, express our own complaints, and do our own thing, whatever it may be. For us, solitude most often means privacy. We have come to the dubious conviction that we all have a right to privacy. Solitude thus becomes like a spiritual property for which we can compete on the free market of spiritual goods. But there is more. We also think of solitude as a station where we can recharge our batteries, or as a corner of the boxing ring where our wounds are oiled, our muscles massaged, and our courage restored by fitting slogans. In short, we think of solitude as a place where we gather new strength to continue the ongoing competition of life.

Nouwen helps me realize that an overly busy and hyper-scheduled life pushes me towards privacy. And if I confuse privacy with solitude, it is another way to avoid the emptiness of silence and the rest of stillness. If I want to live in the presence of grace I must own that "solitude is not a private therapeutic place. Rather, it is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs." I think that Brother Henri also makes it clear that transformative solitude is saturated in prayer. 

If solitude were primarily an escape from a busy joy, and silence primarily an escape from a noisy milieu, they could easily become very self-centered forms of asceticism. But solitude and silence are for prayer. The Desert Fathers (and Mothers) did not think of solitude as being alone, but as being alone with God. They did not think of silence as not speaking but as listening to God. Solitude and silence are the context within which prayer is practiced.

This is what Nouwen means when he writes: "Solitude is the place where we go in order to hear the truth about ourselves. It asks us to let go of the other ways of proving, which are a lot more satisfying. The voice that calls us the beloved is not the voice that satisfies the senses. That’s what the whole mystical life is about; it is beyond feelings and beyond thoughts." We step into the emptiness and quiet so that resting we can listen to the "voice that calls us the Beloved." There is more to be revealed, more to trust, and more to be practiced. But I give thanks for an afternoon of weeding, cutting grass and hauling stones to the garden, that my inner tree might be watered by the flowing stream of grace.