About silence - 22 July 2011

Silence is a key component of contemplative prayer. But as we rapidly find, silence is exceedingly difficult. The best we can manage is a relative silence, perhaps a little quieter round about than is usually the case. It is a noisy world. People who come to visit us at Algies Bay typically remark how quiet it is. So it seems to them. But the vehicles still roar up and down the road at intervals -- and that’s just the upright local citizenry carting their kids to school, or the blokes cruising around on their tractors or quad bikes or starting up chain saws in case there might be something to hew down. Thomas Merton in his hermitage far out in the woods of Kentucky complained about hammering he could hear distantly down the hill, or some farmer’s far off machinery.

Well, the lesson about this is that our prayer is never about escaping from the real world. We needn’t try. The noisy world is real and it’s there and we inhabit it, it is part of us and we are part of its clamour.

The real challenge with silence is interior silence. As soon as we become still and start to pay attention to the present moment we are reminded of the degree of noise and indiscipline in what has been called our monkey minds. St Teresa compared it to a ship whose crew has mutinied, tied up the captain and is chaotically taking turns to steer the ship. Jesus teaches: Therefore I bid you put away anxious thoughts about food and drink to keep you alive, and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes.

We aim to be in the present moment, which is the only moment of reality, of encounter with the God who is “I Am.” Yet within seconds we are thinking thoughts of yesterday, making plans for tomorrow or weaving daydreams and wish-fulfillment in the realm of fantasy. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, tomorrow will look after itself, says Jesus.

So, we only approximate to interior silence as well. But Christian Meditation is the discipline in which we come back to our approximation each day, and with the help of the mantra bring our monkey minds back to the centre again and again. A silence and stillness begins to settle into our lives at the other times. Simply discovering that we are, however poorly, free to place our attention elsewhere than on ourselves is the first great awakening. It is the beginning of the deepening of consciousness, which allows us to leave the distractions on the surface, like waves on the surface of the ocean.