Communal silence: words and refraining from words

This past weekend my husband and I went to a retreat studded with silence. A communal silence. Yes, there was laughter and conversation, music and chit-chat, but the periods of silence were the most resonant. Silence after prayer, after reading of the Psalms, before lunch, around a bonfire (of course, after and not while smores were being made). Sometimes the silence was suggested by those leading the retreat and sometimes - such as around the fire, when the logs had burned down to embers - the silence arose organically, a mutually-given gift of peace. A shared comfort and understanding. A new friend said with a catch in her voice that the silence was so present she could touch it. 

Towards the end of this weekend cycling of words and refraining from words, I led a short hands-on writing workshop. No words in the air but words spilling out on paper. Sometimes you have to stop the flow of the first in order to open the flow of the second. I loved the smiles breaking out as discoveries were made, personal messages that emerge when you fill pages and then sit with them for awhile. Even through this, though, we sat together at tables and the writing silence was communal. I’m quite sure the silence feeds the writing, and community feeds personal discovery. Paradox abounds.

~~~

[Photo: Taken on walk on said retreat; walk was in silence but I do admit to checking my email while walking.]

Words to be silent by

In a couple week I'll be giving a talk on solitude and silence and so my radar is on hyperalert for things related. I laid the just-arrived issue of Pilgrimage journal on the table and there on the back cover were words from Henri Nouwen:

Somewhere we know
that without silence words lose their meaning,
that without listening speaking no longer heals,
that without distance closeness cannot cure.

Why silence?

In The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen addresses "three ways of preventing the world from shaping us in its image and thus the three ways to life in the Spirit": solitude, silence, and prayer.

Thursday night I began the silence section of this short book (only 81 pages). It was the end of a strenuous day of medical-writing project deadlines and trying to untangle a personal essay that is due to my school advisor by Monday. My brain was overflowing with words. Approaching the topic of silence was like a balm. Even though the words I'd been dealing with were silent words, in my brain and on paper, they were words nonetheless and their traffic inside me was bumper-to-bumper.

Nouwen writes,

Over the last few decades we have been inundated by a torrent of words. Wherever we go we are surrounded by words: words softly whisphered, loudly proclaimed, or angrily screamed; words spoken, recited, or sung; words on records, in books, on walls, or in the sky; words in many sounds, many colors, or many forms; words to be heard, read, seen, or glanced at; words which flicker off and on, move slowly, dance, jump, or wiggle. Words, words, words! They form the floor, the walls, and the ceiling of our existence.

This was published in 1981. Think how many more words we have to look at in the course of day thanks to our online resources, including blogs.

Drawing from writings from the Desert Fathers, Nouwen goes on to say,

For [the Desert Fathers], the word is the instrument of the present world and silence is the mystery of the future world. If a word is to bear fruit it must be spoken from the future world into the present world. The Desert Fathers therefore considered their going into the silence of the desert to be a first step into the future world. From that world their words could bear fruit, because there they could be filled with the power of God's silence.

The issue of silence–ie, absence of words–is more than taking a break, just as true leisure is more than a break. It is a letting go of producing, a letting go of filling air and space with words we choose. It is putting ourselves in a position to receive something bigger than ourselves from outside of ourselves. (But the break part is a good perk.)

That's why I provided the silence-in-lieu-of-words post yesterday. Did you take the opportunity? I hope so. Maybe I'll do it again from time to time.

In lieu of words I'm offering you...

Silence.

How long do you spend reading a single average blog post? Ten seconds? Two minutes? Five minutes? That's how much silence I'm offering you instead of the same time equivalent in words. For example–if two minutes is what you usually spend, then set a timer now for two minutes, or alternatively, check your watch; be silent for the full two minutes. By silent, I mean the no-words-anywhere kind of silent.

Start now. Shhh...

Why silence? Check back in tomorrow.

Only the silent hear

Here's a big chunk from Joseph Pieper's, Leisure: The Basis of Culture:

Leisure is a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality: only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear. Silence, as it is used in this context, does not mean 'dumbness' or 'noiselessness'; it means more nearly that the soul's power to 'answer' to the reality of the world is left undisturbed. For leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude, and it is not only the occasion but also the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation.

Furthermore, there is also a certain serenity in leisure. That serenity springs precisely from our inability to understand, from our recognition of the mysterious nature of the universe; it springs from the courage of deep confidence, so that we are content to let things take their course; and there is something about it which Konrad Weiss, the poet, called 'confidence in the fragmentariness of life and history.'...

Leisure is not the attitude of mind of those who actively intervene, but of those who are open to everything; not of those who grab and grab hold, but of those who leave the reins loose and who are free and easy themselves–almost like a man falling asleep, for one can only fall asleep by 'letting oneself go.' Sleeplessness and the incapacity for leisure are really related to one another in a special sense, and a man at leisure is not unlike a man asleep...It is in these silent and receptive moments that the soul of man is sometimes visited by an awareness of what holds the world together.

There is a lot there to think about. I had a hard time working today, preferring instead to dream of leisure.