Silence is important. Silence is necessary. It helps us to focus, to be in tune with our surroundings, with God. How can we truly spend time with someone if there’s noise all around us or we’re staring at our phones? It’s easy to talk over those distractions to others, but incredibly difficult to listen. These are some things that I took away from our Silent Retreat weekend a few weeks ago. As someone whose mind never seems to stop running, moments (hours in this case) of silence can be very difficult for me. I can eliminate all distractions and it’s still too hard for me to focus.
A lot of times when I go into time with God, I want to set the agenda. “Hey Jesus, here’s what I want to deal with and talk about today. I’ll be talking a lot so try and keep up.” A lot of times this shows up in how much I write in my journal. It’s one of the few ways I can organize my thoughts, and I feel like I measure my time with God with how much I get on the page. But this time felt different. During our extended solitude time, I didn’t bring my journal. I sat, read, walked around, napped, with no agenda in mind. As I was walking through the Stations of the Cross and sitting at each one, my mind felt free. It wasn’t racing like it normally does. It was exhausting, being silent with the Lord. But it was good. I wasn’t trying to accomplish anything or work through something specific.
I’ll end with some quotes from Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton:
What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?
How stern You are in Your mercy, and yet You must be. Your mercy has to be just because Your Truth has to be True. How stern You are, nevertheless, in Your mercy: for the more we struggle to be true, the more we discover our falsity. Is it merciful of Your light to bring us, inexorably, to despair? No—it is not to despair that You bring me but to humility. For true humility is, in a way, a very real despair: despair of myself, in order that I may hope entirely in You. What man can bear to fall into such darkness?
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Cheers,
Cam