By Fr Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Many of us could use more silence in our lives. I say this cautiously because the place of silence in our lives isn’t easy to specify.
Silence is a complex; sometimes we fear it and try to avoid it and sometimes when we are tired and over-stimulated we positively long for it.
Generally, though, we have too little of it in our lives. Work, cellphones, conversation, entertainment, news, distraction, and preoccupations of every kind tend to fill up every waking minute. We have become so used to being stimulated by words, information, and distraction that we often feel lost and restless when we find ourselves alone, without someone to talk to, something to watch, something to read, or something to do to take up our attention.
Not all of this is bad, mind you. In the past, spiritual writers were generally too one-sided in extolling the virtues of silence. They tended to give the too simple impression that God and spiritual depth were only found in silence, as if the virtues of ordinary work, conversation, celebration, family, and community were somehow second-rate spiritually.
In speaking of the place of silence, former spiritualities generally penalized extroverts and let introverts off too easily. In brief, they didn’t sufficiently take into account that all of us, extroverts and introverts alike, need the therapy of a public life. While we need silence for depth, we need interaction with others for grounding and sanity. Certain inner work can only be done in silence, but a certain grounding of our sanity depends on interaction with others. Silence can also be an escape, an avoidance of the stinging purification that often can happen only through the challenge of interacting within a family and a community.
Moreover, silence is not always the best way to deal with heartaches and obsessions. Ultimately, this is a form of overconcentration. Sometimes when a heartache is threatening our sanity, the best thing we can do is not go to the chapel but rather to the theatre or to a meal with a friend. Preoccupation with work or a healthy distraction can sometimes be just the friend you need when your heart is fighting asphyxiation.
There’s a story about the famous philosopher Hegel. Immediately after finishing his monumental work on the phenomenology of history, he realized that he was on the edge of a major breakdown because of the intensity of his concentration over so long a period. What did he do to break out of this? Go on a silent retreat? No. He went to the opera every night, dined every day with friends, and sought out every kind of distraction until, after a while, the strangling grip of his inner world finally let go and the sunshine and freshness of everyday life broke through again. Sometimes distraction, not silence, is our best cure, even spiritually.
Still, there’s a need for silence. What the great spiritual writers of all ages tried to teach on this subject can perhaps be captured in a single line from Meister Eckhart: Nothing resembles the language of God as much as silence.
In essence, Eckhart is saying that silence is a privileged entry into the divine realm. There’s a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself and can help us learn the language of heaven. What’s meant by this?
Silence is a language that’s deeper, more far-reaching, more understanding, more compassionate, and more eternal than any other language. In heaven, it seems, there will be no languages, no words. Silence will speak. We will wholly, intimately, and ecstatically understand each other and hold each other in silence. Ironically, for all their importance, words are part of the reason we can’t fully do this already. Words unite but they also divide. There’s a deeper connection available in silence.
Lovers already know this, as do the Quakers whose liturgy tries to imitate the silence of heaven, and as do those who practice contemplative prayer. John of the Cross expresses this in a wonderfully cryptic line: “Learn to understand more by not understanding than by understanding.”
Silence can speak louder than words, and more deeply. We experience this already in different ways: when we are separated by distance or death from loved ones, we can still be with them in silence; when we are divided from other sincere persons through misunderstanding, silence can provide the place where we can be together; when we stand helpless before another’s suffering, silence can be the best way of expressing our empathy; and when we have sinned and have no words to restore things to their previous wholeness, in silence a deeper word can speak and let us know that, in the end, all will be well and every manner of being will be well.
Nothing resembles the language of God as much as silence. It’s the language of heaven, already deep inside of us, beckoning us, inviting us into deeper intimacy with everything, even as we still need the therapy of a public life.
Used with permission of the author, Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser. Currently, Father Rolheiser is currently serving as President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas. He can be contacted through his website, www.ronrolheiser.com. Follow on Facebook www.facebook.com/ronrolheiser.
