Tag Archives: silence

ANOTHER VOICE

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windytrees

WILD AND HOWLING winds swirling around the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield made for a reflective, elemental sort of a night. I’m a bit ambivalent about strong wind generally, on the one hand slightly fearful of its power and a tad resentful about its uninvited imposition, and on the other sometimes willing simply to “let go, let fly” – and the encounter with raw nature brings a fleeting sense of oneness with the swirling. With life.

Morning prayer in a gloriously quiet monastic environment lends the soul an opportunity to hear “another voice” – and oh what blessings are to be heard in the silent voices within – whether Divine or divine. Whether Love or loved ones. Connecting. Connected. Silently. Here in this moment. And in eternity.

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak

Mary Oliver

Just pay attention Simon Robert. Only pay attention. The word of the angels is near. Breathe is the word. Breathe

SILENCE AND FR RICHARD

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THANK GOD for Fr Richard Rohr, who writes in his Daily Meditations here (or click on the image)

The goal of all spirituality is to lead the “naked person” to stand trustfully before the naked God. The important thing is that we’re naked; in other words, that we come without title, merit, shame, or even demerit. All we can offer to God is who we really are, which to all of us never seems like enough. I am sure this is the way true lovers feel, too.

As you know, the act of lovemaking requires some degree of nakedness, and perhaps sacred silence to absorb the communion that is happening. The same is true in loving and being loved by God. We have to let go of our false self (as either superior or inferior) to allow God to choose us “in our lowliness” as Mary says (Luke 1:48). To do that, we have to be silent and wait. What a crucifixion this is sometimes!

Silence is the language of God, and the only language deep enough to absorb all the contradictions and failures that we are holding against ourselves. God loves us silently, because God has no case to make against us. Silent communion absorbs our self-hatred, as every lover knows.

LETTING WORDS GO …

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IT’S WELL NIGH impossible to describe the measure of “peace that passeth understanding” that is experienced here during our monthly gatherings for Monday Meditation. That, in part, must be due to the fact that meditation is really about letting go of thoughts and words and just being. I’m mindful this evening of the gospel account of the great storm that frightened Jesus’ disciples out of their wits. His words for them are words we do well to hear now:

Peace. Be still.

A core group of around 75 people are practising regularly in and around our parish church, and many tell me that the “peace” spoken of in the ancient prayers of the Church – but not always experienced - is becoming a deeper reality for them.

For all that Jesus calls us to rise up and follow him into action, (said one note this week) there’s no avoiding the message that he still speaks when we get caught in – or turn life into a storm. Always the same: ‘Peace. Be still.’

I’m grateful.

MARY’S DRESS

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BANK HOLIDAY weekend affords a happy extension to “left brain time.” There are always more books I want to read, more paintings I want to paint, more photographs I want to make, more writing to be done, more poems to unfold, more prayer to be celebrated, more people to share some time and stories with, more songs to be sung, more colours to be marvelled at, more silence to be revelled in – than time ordinarily allows. And that very fact is cause for thanksgiving! Life is indeed a rich tapestry. The signs of the reign, the joy of God, are all around me. And I’m immensely thankful for the connections that blogging makes possible with people all around the world.

Today’s artwork is inspired, in Eastertide, by Mary Magdalene, beloved apostle of Jesus, first witness to new life in the Resurrection, loyal provider of intimate and loving support and sustenance, someone generous, open-hearted and giving, someone who just “knew” instinctively, what Jesus’ mission on earth was about, someone released, by God’s goodness, from the kind of prison every one of us finds ourselves in from time to time.

All human persons are “bedevilled” by “Legion” the perpetually underlying and taunting belief that somehow we’re failing to make the grade, we’re unlovable, bigger and better “failures” than anyone else, destined to be “alone”, faithless, heartbroken, misunderstood, wretched. All human persons yearn for the kind of release that Jesus’ love and acceptance brought about in Mary’s life; for the kind of release that she brought about in his.

Mary Magdalene: someone cruelly maligned and abused by religious patriarchy and misogyny across the centuries, but all the while someone I’ve admired and looked to as an icon of life’s richness and fullness, of life’s goodness and generosity, of life’s being – under the vivifying reign of God – a beautifully, colourfully, gorgeously dressed dance with our Creator.

Sydney Carter described Jesus as The Lord of the Dance. In my heart I think of Mary of Magdala as Jesus’ dance-partner and she is clothed, dressed, like the environment all around and about her, in colour and glory. And theirs is a partnership, theirs is a dance that, far from being exclusive and excluding, invites you and I to join. “Shall we dance?”, Mary asks. “And shall we sing?”, asks the Lord of the Dance. And sometimes the colours blur a little in the swirling. And sometimes they’re blended by our tears …

Have you seen the wonder of it? Have you seen Mary’s dress?

INEFFABLE

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please click photo to enlarge

[Silence can] say what words cannot. It can express intimacy so deep that speech becomes superfluous. It can portray a love so close that voices become obsolete. That silence is not emptiness. It is filled with the ineffable. Some words are only placeholders for things too divine to explain.

via Words/Love.

FOR MONTHS I’ve noticed that the most often visited post on this blog is Silence and that email correspondence ex-blog is, more often than not, silence / retreat / prayer or meditation-related. And a feature in our parish life that binds people at every stage in life, from children to the very elderly, is our shared times of silence. Monthly Monday Meditation (half an hour’s shared silence for meditation with one simple spoken prayer for blessing before departure in silence) has been one of our biggest and most consistent growth points for more than 12 months in a row. Many, many people – writing from every corner of the globe – tell me of their desire to seek out ways of being more fully inclusive, to break down “walls that divide”, to find (or better to celebrate having found) a deeper communion. There’s an appetite, a hunger, all over the world, for silence. I love this photograph (Vega, Fuerteventura, Islas Canarias) because, years after making the image, I can “hear” the silence I encountered at the time. The only sound around in those mountains was the high-song of a tiny shrike.

please click photo to enlarge

Why is the world searching for silence? My blogging friend, Francesca Zelnick, Words/Love, with her tremendous gift for finding the right word even when her subject is no words, seems to me to have struck gold: [Silence] “is filled with the ineffable. Some words are only placeholders for things too divine to explain.”

Meditatio Podcast here | The World Community for Christian Meditation here

not ready for silence just now? Try Flying – “close your eyes” by Mira Shvangiradze

Silence in the City video here

HOW SHALL I SING? ii

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SOMETIMES OUR SINGING needs to be silent, simply a standing in awe. I love to use a camera, but I’ve never forgotten the delightful nun I companied with on a silent retreat, many years ago, who told me afterwards – “I take photographs with the lens of my heart”.

Anyway, standing in awe before tonight’s sunset I thought that whoever and whatever God is, God is indescribably generous, the Supreme Artist. The lens of God’s Heart lies beyond description – albeit that we see shining facets of that love in Jesus, who told humankind – through his own loved ones – that we may see more and more of that love in and through one another.

How Shall I Sing That Majesty? – probably primarily by being fully and consciously alive …

SILENT LIFTING MIND …

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MONTH AFTER MONTH there’s a blessed gathering in the blurred and candlelit silence of our Monthly Monday Meditation. If Messy Church is important (and we absolutely believe it is) it is also of fundamental importance that we recognise the power of silence, of meditation, and of prayer, for the proper undergirding of our many and varied activities. No apologies for non-attendance are necessary or invited. This is not a numbers game. We don’t count. There’s nothing to do when we get there, except just be, in company with the “we” that makes up what the Quakers call a “circle of trust”. But, touchingly, beautifully, people send little notes or emails if they can’t make it sometimes. “I treasure this monthly gathering more than gold” said one such tonight. “And though I can’t be there in person you’ll know that I’m there in spirit”. And I do know, actually, that they’re “there”, even as I know that most of those who gather on these occasions couldn’t describe what happens either in the silence or in themselves. They / we are only able to say that it pulls us back, again and again. We just know, somehow, male and female, old and young, that it’s something necessary. Something important. Something of God.

And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee | High Flight

MARCHING ORDERS

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I WAS SHOCKED. I’ve got to be honest. And many years later I still remember it. My first parish. One of the early home visits. “O Lord no, Vicar! You’d never catch me at the 10.30. I can’t stand all that dreadful hymn-singing and racket.” ERDC – as she always signed her many postcard notes to me – was always, I’d noticed, already in her place in church a good 40 minutes before the Sunday morning “8am”. One noticed her not for the host of ordinary reasons one notices people for, but for exactly the opposite. ERDC always appeared hardly to be breathing, very, very small (though actually at least five feet 10″), very, very still, and utterly, utterly silent. Oh, and deeply at peace, the hint of a smile always about her wide mouth.

But yes, shocked. Never catch me at the 10.30. Dreadful hymn-singing. Racket. Other things occupied my thoughts, of course, during the early months of the new pastorate. But I kept coming back to how I was going to tactfully address ERDC’s awfully churlish aversion to hymns, racket, and – I thought – other people. Until one day the pile of postcards on my desk – each beautifully inscribed Faithfully, ERDC wrought in me a most significant epiphany. For each provided me with an account of some illness, hospitalization perhaps, or a person now rendered housebound, or a broken arm, or ‘flu, or post-natal depression, or exasperated expression. ERDC had taken up every case. Always amongst the first to make the hospital visit, bake a cake, deliver flowers, offer to babysit, invite someone to (deliciously old-fashioned) afternoon tea. Far from my delivering a well-placed pastoral word in her ear I realised with a jolt that I could use a (no doubt silent) word of wisdom from ERDC for me!

So it came about that I asked Diana two questions one day – at afternoon tea. Having wondered about Eleanor Rose Diana, or maybe Esther Rachel Diana, or maybe Edith Ruth Diana, I asked ERDC what the initials ER before DC represented. “Early Riser dear”, she said briskly. Oh! I said. And asked my second question. Why such an early start on Sunday, and why’s the silence so much more important to you than “hymn-singing and racket”? ERDC smiled widely. Hands in her lap, very still, she replied quietly “because that’s where I get my marching orders dear”. I miss her. She almost certainly knows that.