Sounds of silence – 8 June 2012

In contemplative prayer, silence is always a relative thing. Pure silence never happens. Thomas Merton, shut away in his hermitage in the woods, away from all the distractions of the monastery, including all its religious noises, learned to laugh at himself. In the woods he still had the sounds of the wind and the trees. He got irritated at the faint and distant sound of some farmer with his tractor, and a far-off aircraft conveying gamblers to Las Vegas. And all that was before all the noise of mental distractions kicked in. We shouldn’t expect silence if we mean the absence of noise. That occurs nowhere. In a sound-proof room there is still the noise our body makes, breathing and churning along. But none of that matters. The silence that matters is at another level, where we have started to still our monkey minds, which are habitually all over the place. There is that in us which is frightened of a vacuum, immediately wants to fill up a space, gets nervous or guilty if we are not “doing something”. Meditation is in one sense simply where we are learning, over weeks and years, to shut up, close down the agendas, and be internally still. Simple perhaps, but not easy. Neither, however, are we listening for God. To a lot of earnest Christian people this may come as a bit of a surprise. We are not expecting messages or visions, inspirations or revelations, ecstasies or raptures. The older teachers say that levitation is rigorously discouraged. Indeed, in a sense, we let go of these things and these needs… the need to have results, encouragement, something for me. Our only task is to consent to what God is doing in our hearts when once we are still. It is this consent that matters, our deep inner Yes to God. It is also where we encounter God’s unconditional Yes to us. And so it is the end of fear. In the silence we are able, as time goes by, to let go of childhood images of God, primitive fears and superstitions. Simply to be present, as God is fully and lovingly and unconditionally present to us, means these things start to evaporate, replaced by an enhanced capacity to love and to be loved. Abide in me, says Jesus – abide in my love.