Tip-Off #135 - Time to be quiet
"There are only sacred places and desecrated places; there are no unsacred places." - Wendell Berry, "How to Write a Poem."
Someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
- Philip Larkin, Church Going
During personal trouble, a friend told me about St. Joseph’s Abbey, an hour from New Haven Ct. where I lived. My friend wasn’t sure I could take all the silence—this was a Trappist monastery where speech was restricted, which was not my strong suit. Since therapy had become nothing but talk, I took my friend’s advice and spent a week at the abbey (a monastery under an abbot’s or abbess’s governance). (*)
Ironically, “silence” turned out to make sense because it wasn’t an answer to anything. In those days, at least on retreat, silence was not “mindfulness” but mindlessness. It’s impossible to think about nothing, but there is something like nothing to think about — thoughts and ideas come and go, which is usually called wasting time. But when silence is the order of the day, no time is wasted, and God doesn’t have to say anything.
For me, this was the beginning of a silent revolution. I had never thought of faith as silence or that God sometimes says nothing. A joke about Protestants and our obsession with preaching made me smile again: “The Word became flesh, and you turn it back into words again.” We can’t keep quiet. I suppose right now is another example.
Another part of the irony is that this new sense of “silence” at the silent abbey came after conversation with the Abbot. This had to be arranged because it involved talking.
The Abbot at the time was Father Basil Pennington, a leading spiritual writer, speaker, and teacher known for his work on Centering Prayer, a form of meditation. Father Pennington was a literal embodiment of the Word becoming flesh. By his whole bearing and recurring smile, he embodied an unusual, bracing calm.
Rather than referring only to his own writing, Fr. Pennington directed me to the work of Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, who was also passionate about contemplative practices and their potential to foster spiritual growth and understanding across religious boundaries. Kushner draws on a millennium of Jewish spirituality and commentary. One of his books, in particular, echoes Pennington’s thought and my experience at St. Joseph’s: God Was in This Place and I, i Did Not Know.
Kushner begins, “Like the One who has no mouth, who spoke the first letter that has no sound, the biblical word conceals an infinity of meanings.” Kushner explores the story of Jacob in Genesis fleeing home after betraying his brother. He lands in the middle of a desert in the dark. On a cold night, he lay down in the wilderness to sleep with a stone for a pillow. He dreamed there was a ladder, with angels ascending and descending, stretched between heaven and earth—between God and Jacob, as it were. God “speaks” through a dream of reassurance, promise, and blessing.
Rabbi Kushner highlights Jacob's transformation in his dream. Jacob had been self-centered and focused on his own desires and fears, represented by the lowercase "i." However, the dream reveals a larger reality: Jacob is part of something greater than himself, symbolized by the ladder between earth and heaven—hence the uppercase “I.” (Colloquially: a wave discovers it is defined by the sea.)
In the middle of nowhere, on a cold night, running away in despair, not knowing where he was going, Jacob discovers who he really was. With nothing to say and nothing to hear but the sound of silence; broken, afraid, and guilty… suddenly, Jacob found more than a way out of trouble and hope for the future: he found the future right now in the middle of trouble, blessed by hope beyond belief.
If night in the desert and a stone for a pillow, betrayal, guilt, loneliness, and despair are also places of grace, what isn’t? When I left St. Joseph’s, my problems had gotten no better, but I had. I still faced trouble, but with a new sense of myself. Like Jacob, I, too, am a lot bigger than “i”—stronger than my weakness, greater than my guilt, and blessed beyond measure.
It’s said that running away from God is the longest race of all. I believe that. But I also believe that faith can be running away from nothing and creating one more thing to do, missing the grace that sometimes creates a void to fill.
A final irony underscores the grace-filled potential within “nothingness”: as I finish writing this, the latest issue of New Scientist landed on my desk with a cover headline: “How to create energy from nothing—Quantum Quirk.”
Philip Larkin’s “hunger to be more serious” may be a hunger to quit trying so hard.
Notes and reading
(*) I am sharing my personal experience as a retreatant at St. Joseph's. While my reflections align with the spirituality I encountered, they are my own and not a direct reflection of the theology of monasticism or the Abbey's teachings.
“Holiness permeates the entire world, manifesting in various moments and places.”
- M. Basil Pennington O.C.S.O.
Finding Grace at the Center (3rd Edition): The Beginning of Centering Prayer (2007).
Centered Living: The Way of Centering Prayer - with Rabbi Kushner (1999).
Books by Pennington.
God Was in This Place & I, i Did Not Know―25th Anniversary Ed: Finding Self, Spirituality and Ultimate Meaning - Rabbi Lawrence Kushner (2016), not the popular author, Rabbi Harold Kushner (Why Bad Things Happen to Good People).
“ . . . grace that sometimes creates a void to fill” - Simone Weil wrote, “Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.” Gravity and Grace (2002), 10.
Radical Mindfulness - James K. Rowe (2023) Insights from multiple traditions, including Indigenous resurgence theorists, to integrate seemingly apolitical practices such as meditation and ritual into movements combating structural injustices. Rowe is an Associate Professor of Political Ecology and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought (CSPT) at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, CA.
Father Pennington (1931-2005)
Trappist monk who traveled the world
First Western Christian to spend time at
Mount Ethos, a center of Eastern Orthodoxy
Teacher of Christian practices of devotion