Well gang, lets go ahead and address the first elephant in the room, shall we? You’re probably sitting there thinking “Alec… I am disappointed… “Who Knows Anymore” is not a number, and henceforth cannot be an addition to your volume series. UGH!” I totally get how that can be frustrating and I am sorry, but you simply are just going to have to deal with it (hehehe >:) ). Of course, that is obviously not what you are probably thinking. In reality, you are probably thinking, “Where has this guy been?? The last time I got a blog update from him was in the month of January and now its April, like what?” In honor of it being Fools day today I thought it would be the perfect day to address this train of thought, because frankly I have been disappointed with myself in the attempt to try and not write these at all.
Put it simply, these past few months I have had little to no inspiration to write. I drafted up an entire blog somewhere in between January and now but after reading it, felt pretty melancholy about the whole thing. It wasn’t my usual barnburner of a blog that I have been delivering month in and month out. That being said, I am not an author. It’s not like I am trying to impress anyone with my wordscraft (it’s a word, get over it) or thoughtfulness. I do however have a hidden agenda to entertain whoever is reading. A lot of people say that reading these is as if I was saying it straight to their face. That being said, the words I have been inclined to put down in these monthly summaries just have left me feeling disconnected from my own self recently. I read them with confusion about what I am even trying to say and with wonder about where the heck all my parenthetical thoughts went (insert thought here). Contrary to what I am talking about though, this past week has felt much different. I have in some way ventured into a swale, where my writing self and I have been learning to operate once again (you like that word, “swale”, pretty impressive huh?).
Today, on this glorious Fools day, I wanted to talk about the ~reorientation of the self~ (which is by no means foolish). Recently in our Raleigh Fellows journey, we had a silent retreat. Now if you were me before last week, you are probably wondering “what does that even mean, “silent retreat”?”. Basically, we were silent and retreated. Haha just kidding. Well not really, but obviously it was deeper than that. Turns out there are these things called prayer centers?? At least in North Carolina there is one that exists close to Greensboro. The one we went to was called the St. Francis prayer and retreat center and boy was it magical. In all seriousness, it might have been one of my favorite camp-type places I have ever been to. Which is bold considering how many YL camps I have been to. Wait, I am sorry. I meant to say “considering how many YL glamps I have been to” (if you know, you know). There was just something about how the retreat center was set up. It was shimmering with intentionality. Every spot of land had the Lord sprinkled into it, whether physically or atmospherically (at least it felt that way). It truly was a perfect place to try and retreat for the weekend, and you can bet your top dollar that we did just that.
The tempo of the retreat went a little like this: arrival, tour of the camp grounds, dinner, spiritual formation/lectio divina (in case you don’t know the latin phrase it is a spiritual practice that is pretty neat, look it up), silence until noon the next day (that meant silence during group gatherings to eat food, more. spiritual formation/lectio divina, silence until 6, dinner, last spiritual formation/lectio divina, departure. In all of that, we as a group spent collectively 21 hours in silence. of course a healthy 8 hours (for some of us 12 hours) of this was dedicated to sleeping, but even still 9-13 hours of silence??? that is a pretty long time to “shut your yap” as we say in the ol’ Kansas territory. You might even be thinking, “that sounds literally awful, I would never want to do that.” In case I guessed right, let me offer you my experience in hopes that the rich discipline of silence/solitude doesn’t get dismissed so easily. I, as a person absolutely hate having to be alone. I was the guy in college who always tried to make someone go with me to the grocery store so I didn’t have to go alone. Honestly not just the grocery store but any errand I would have to run, I would pray that someone would go with me so I didn’t have to be by myself wandering about (it just makes things more fun when someone else is with you and also you don’t have to encounter that weird passing feeling of loneliness so that too). That being said, silence and solitude for me has been something I don’t really want to spend time in. That was very true until this year.
This year has been a year of a lot of growth and a lot of time alone. We as fellows, really need a few hours here and there to just recharge because we are constantly doing things every week. For me, I have a 30 minute car ride to work in the morning and from work in the evening. This has become one of my favorite rhythms of my week. The thing about solitude/silence, is that you really aren’t alone. The whole point of the discipline is to shut up so that you can stop making God have to shut up. Think about that, think about God trying to get a word in but you are too busy talking. Weird, right? An author I have been reading this year said in terms of solitude, “One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel helpless. We are accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Silence is intimately related to trust… One of the fruits of silence is to let God be our justifier.” How was reading that? Weird, right? Think about how many words we expend to try and justify ourselves or to try and take control because we don’t trust that the end outcome we want will happen unless we explicitly say everything we think we need to say. In reality, God is our justifier and he is in ultimate control. Everything on this Earth is His, and everything that we have is a gift from Him. None of our words could lessen or further that.
During my 9-13 hours of silence, I did a lot of things. I took a fat nap (or some may say a phat nap), I played silent chess with my fiend Neil, I toured the retreat center (there were a few trails), I contemplated on the 13 stations of the cross, I exercised, I read an entire C.S. Lewis book, and most importantly, I reorientated. If I were you reading this, I would say “What does that even mean? You reorientated? Like are you saying that you just shifted your positioning?” I just shift my positioning a few times, but that is not what I mean. Extended silence is weird because you can’t really escape from the things that are at the forefront of your mind. No matter how much you move on from them, the thoughts that really have a grip on you just keep coming back around. This at least was my experience. I think only in extended silence can you really identify these things and give them the value they deserve. As humans, we all know anxiety. We all know worry. We all know that feeling of knowing something should change, but not having the capacity to enact it. I think silence, in a way, pushes us to address these things. I mean we can’t run away from them so we might as well deal with them. The key in all of this too is that we recognize in the silence our savior’s presence. In fact further than recognize, we look, like with binoculars, for His presence. We understand that we are feeble creatures and that we need Him. How great it is when we recognize this. How happy our Father must be when we come to Him worried, ashamed, lacking capacity to move forward, etc. How happy our Father must be to be our great counselor in the process of cleansing us of these things.
You ever think about how weird it is to say “I heard God today in this” when, in fact, we can’t hear God at all? The omnipotent King we hear from doesn’t need words to speak. The Holy Spirit is always with us, and our heart knows when He is speaking. It is something unexplainable, but you just know.
In my time of silence-better spoken, in my time with God-I wrote down a few things that I could not stop thinking about. Although it is super corny, I titled the collection of these things “the standards of my heart”. These things were born out of facing the anxieties I could not stop facing during my silence. The standards are as follows:
Nothing is mine, it all belongs to Him, the creator.
When I know I’ve done something wrong, I should own it, expose it, and then ask for forgiveness.
Let God Carry the weight (emotional, mental, physical, spiritual baggage).
Look for and enjoy the beauty he has created.
Take time for myself (silence/solitude).
Invite the hand of the Lord into the present.
Know my own limitations (sometimes I fail and that’s okay).
Appreciate my emotions, do not shut them out.
Dream with the Lord
Seek community and go deep
This is kind of what I was talking about when I said “reorientation of my self”. Also, you ever think about how weird it is that most lists end in 10? Like “here is my top 10 __”. I swear I didn’t force myself to have 10, it just kind of happened.
Anyways y’all, silence is important. It allows for a time of processing and idea creation with the Lord that just simply wouldn’t be possible in any other setting than silent with Him. It is my prayer that you would seek it out in some form. Whether it be not listening to music in the car on the way to and from things every now and again or just taking an extra 5 minutes in the shower to be still (these are my main ways of seeking silence), I just encourage you to seek out some margin! Well, it has been so real. Until the next blog.
May He Bless Your Month,
Alec