Judith Valente's Blog: Mindfulness in the Age of Twitter - Posts Tagged "out"
On Esteem for Silence
Silence is a fast disappearing commodity in our world. If it were traded on a stock exchange, its share price might land somewhere between that of Apple and Bitcoin.
Silence forces us to be alone with our true self and with the one whom the poet Edward Hirsch calls, “the Great Alone,” the God who speaks with no known voice, but as Elijah found, whose voice is heard in the silence.
A few years ago, a young man named Greg Hindy decided to walk from New Hampshire to California – in silence. If he needed to communicate, he would write what he wanted to say in a pocket-sized notepad. His story was chronicled in a powerful documentary called In Pursuit of Silence by filmmakers Patrick Shen and Cassidy Hall, whom I met this past July on a visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani.
Hindy writes, “To gain perspective on your life, you have to step back, and then step back again.” A Zen teacher points out in the film that from the millions of years humans lived close to nature, we still retain the capacity to “feel silence in the body.” And as a U.S. park ranger says, “If we lose our capacity for deep listening, we lose an essential piece of who we are.”
To be sure, there are times when silence is not the appropriate response. There are times for speaking up and speaking out. It remains a great stain of sin that the Catholic hierarchy kept silent for so long about the abuse of children and teens by its priests (as we have seen this week in the report on several Pennslyvania dioceses). We sin when we do not condemn the demonizing by our fellow countrymen of an entire immigrant group, or of people who follow a particular religion. Sometimes it’s not so much my sins of commission I worry about, but my sins of omission, not being there for others when they need me, not speaking out enough when evil needs to stop.
I like to think of silence as orienting us toward right action. It is the pause between thought and action, the element that gives greater gravitas and meaning to the words we do speak. In silence, we rediscover our inner world. We encounter a truth heard only in the heart. Once there, we open a space where God can discover us.
This week, how can we practice greater esteem for silence? After silent contemplation, what do we feel called to speak up about?
Silence forces us to be alone with our true self and with the one whom the poet Edward Hirsch calls, “the Great Alone,” the God who speaks with no known voice, but as Elijah found, whose voice is heard in the silence.
A few years ago, a young man named Greg Hindy decided to walk from New Hampshire to California – in silence. If he needed to communicate, he would write what he wanted to say in a pocket-sized notepad. His story was chronicled in a powerful documentary called In Pursuit of Silence by filmmakers Patrick Shen and Cassidy Hall, whom I met this past July on a visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani.
Hindy writes, “To gain perspective on your life, you have to step back, and then step back again.” A Zen teacher points out in the film that from the millions of years humans lived close to nature, we still retain the capacity to “feel silence in the body.” And as a U.S. park ranger says, “If we lose our capacity for deep listening, we lose an essential piece of who we are.”
To be sure, there are times when silence is not the appropriate response. There are times for speaking up and speaking out. It remains a great stain of sin that the Catholic hierarchy kept silent for so long about the abuse of children and teens by its priests (as we have seen this week in the report on several Pennslyvania dioceses). We sin when we do not condemn the demonizing by our fellow countrymen of an entire immigrant group, or of people who follow a particular religion. Sometimes it’s not so much my sins of commission I worry about, but my sins of omission, not being there for others when they need me, not speaking out enough when evil needs to stop.
I like to think of silence as orienting us toward right action. It is the pause between thought and action, the element that gives greater gravitas and meaning to the words we do speak. In silence, we rediscover our inner world. We encounter a truth heard only in the heart. Once there, we open a space where God can discover us.
This week, how can we practice greater esteem for silence? After silent contemplation, what do we feel called to speak up about?
Mindfulness in the Age of Twitter
In my blog, I focus on thoughts based on my new book (published from Hampton Roads) How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning & Community as well as from my previ
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