What You Really Need When Life is Loud

O
ur ears only open when our lips close quiet.

I learn slow.

I spend the weekend in silent retreat with a gracious community of women at a Benedictine Monastery. We are silent. From Thursday to Sunday, we endeavour not to talk. Our mouths only open to pray Scripture with the monks.

We nod genially to each other when we meet on the walks through the woods, out in the vineyard, down by the monks’ pastures of cows, herd of black angus soundlessly chewing hay. We read in silence up on the hill. We journal. Thirty women eat three times a day in one room in pin drop silence. Fork tines scrape across plates. I hopelessly try to spear lettuce leaves, smile foolish around the table, ring of kind eyes. Jaws chew bread and throats swallow ice tea. Silence can be canyon deep and loneliness a relentless stalker. I hadn’t known.


















The weekend this tongue lies still I hear what I don’t want to hear, what I usually work hard not to hear in my daily life. Do we keep our lives loud because noise obscures our heart cries? The cries that we are cavernously empty and are famished for love- filling, that we are lonely and nothing on this earth will satisfy, that we are wounded and we are weak and we hurt and we need help. A string of silent hours and I hear the whimper of the heart clear, this chafing to be known, to be seen, to be accepted, heart always the man-pleaser, always embrace-hungry. In silence, truth thunders.

Is this why I talk too much, spill too much and in many words there are many sins and do the lips move more in prayer or more often in complaint, in triviality, in self-focus? Why do I wear my heart stark naked on my sleeve when Mary wisely pondered all these things in her heart? Why make all that is private, public, and what of seeking God’s counsel first, God’s counsel alone? What is sacred when all is spoken? There is a “time to be silent and a time to speak” (Ecc. 3:7) and the time to speak is always after the time of silence.

Who can hear the voice of God but those who have times of sealed lips?

Come Vespers, I arrive to the hush of the church early, sit in the dim shadows waiting for prayers, waiting with prayers. The space is oceanic stillness – pacific. I lay placid. And it washes over me, how silence can transform: in silence, this body that is His temple, becomes sanctuary, the quiet of the holy.

Only when the interior of a life becomes a chapel can the outward life echo with the clear Word of the Lord.

The church bells begin to ring, the call to come. I open my Bible, and I read and I quiet, wait, listen.

Sealed lips set the soul as a seal upon His heart.






Five Reasons to Regularly make Silent Retreats in the Day:

1. In Many Words are Many Sins:

“When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, but he who restrains his lips is wise.” (Prov. 10:19)

2. All Strength Has its Roots in Silence:

“In quietness and trust is your strength." (Isa. 30:15) As the strength of God that came into the world to save us emerged from 9 months of silent gestation in a womb, from three days of silent waiting in the tomb, so words that emerge from silence have strength.

“And this righteousness will bring peace. Yes, it will bring quietness and confidence forever.” (Isa. 32:17)

3. In silence we cease Living Reactively and begin to Live Reflectively:

Much of our lives aren’t lived from the inner to the outer, but only in reaction to the outer world – our words and actions are reactive to outer stimulus, outer noise, outer distractions. In silence we learn to not live reactively, but reflectively – a still pond listening for God, a quiet life reflects His ways, reflects His heart, reflects Christ’s actions. 



4. In Silence We Face the Canyons:

In the quiet, without the noise of distractions, we begin to hear the cry from the chasms of our hearts, begin to hear the depth of our need for love, affirmation, community. In a world where it all too easy to fill the gorges of our pain with people and noise and activity, it is only in silence that our neediness draws us to God for His healing.



5. Silence is an exercise in Humility:

Author Michael Casey writes,

“ [Constant talking] restricts our capacity to listen, it banishes mindfulness and opens the door to distraction and escapism. Talking too much often convinces us of the correctness of our own conclusions and leads some into thinking they are wise. It can be a subtle exercise in arrogance and superiority. Often patterns of dependence, manipulation and dominance are established and maintained by the medium of speech.”

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Photos: From a weekend of silent retreat at Subiaco Monastery
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