Judith Valente's Blog: Mindfulness in the Age of Twitter - Posts Tagged "religion"

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?

I participated in a very interesting video conference call this week. It was a conversation organized by a group called “Nuns and Nones.” The monthly calls bring together Catholic sisters from religious orders across the country with young people in their twenties and thirties, many of whom have no particular religious affiliation, the so-called “nones.”

Nuns and “nones” might seem like unlikely partners. Some of the young people on the call might more accurately describe themselves as spiritual seekers. What draws the two groups together is a mutual hunger for social justice, a strong desire for community, and the growing belief that there is much about society – and institutional religion in particular— that needs to change.

The Pew Research Center identifies those who are religiously unaffiliated as among the fastest growing segments on America’s religious landscape. About a third of all Millennials identify as nones, or not affiliated. These same polls also show that Millennials, while eschewing much of the male patriarchy of institutional religion, remain drawn to the gospel values of mercy, justice, and peace.
Enter U.S. Catholic sisters – the women we so often find on the front lines of ministering to the families on the border and in detention centers, the inmates in our prisons, the hungry in our soup kitchens, the sick and infirm in our hospitals and nursing homes, the children growing up amid violence in too many inner city neighborhoods.

The conversation I participated in centered on how to engage with others who might have a different perspective. One young woman wanted to know how to work with people whose views on homosexuality differed from her own sense of justice and equality. These young men and women also wanted to know what contemplative practices the sisters find helpful in negotiating conflicting points of view.

It was a stunning example of cross-generational dialogue. Many of the Catholic sisters involved are three times older than the young nones and seekers. What struck me was how honest the sisters allow themselves to be. They related their own struggles in trying to respond compassionately to people with whom they don’t agree. One told of an encounter with a person who argued that families arrested at the border are only getting what they deserve. Another told of a confronting her own father about his views on women and minorities. They told of struggling to keep in check their own biases and judgments.

Not surprisingly, the sisters stressed the importance of respectful listening. As one sister described it, “Listening for the places where there might be an opening” for discovering common ground.

Among some of the practices they suggested: in a group where there is bound to be conflict, begin by observing 10 minutes of silence. Be intentional about having a cup of coffee with those whom you know think and feel differently than you do. Be curious about what informs another person’s point of view. Most of all, make building relationship – and not winning or convincing – the priority.

Catholic sisters in the U.S. proved themselves models of this in how they responded several years ago to two investigations by the Vatican under Pope Benedict XVII. They didn’t react with anger or vitriol, but by seeking collegiality with their accusers. They showed their faithfulness by discussing their beliefs and their ministries respectfully and with dignity. In doing so, they taught us all how to respond to injustice.

Several of the young people on the Nuns and Nones conference call referred to how the sisters had handled this difficult time. I came away from the conversation with hope for our future as a nation. In a sad, chaotic, and too often unkind period in our history, these young people are choosing community over conflict, consensus over competition, listening over talking, and dialogue over division.

You might not find the Nones in the Sunday pews. But clearly their hearts yearn to make a difference. Their hearts yearn for something larger than themselves. They, in their way, are seeking God. In that sense, they have a great deal in common with the Catholic sisters. They have turned to these wise women for help in sorting through their questions. And who better than these true practitioners of the gospel to companion these young women and men on the journey?

For more information on Nuns and Nones, go to the group’s website (www.nunsandnones.org) and read about them in the Global Sisters Report: www.globalsistersreport.org/news/tren...