23. Silence

“Come to the quiet. Come and fill your soul like a child at rest on her mother’s breast.”

We live in a world of terrible noise.  I drove down a highway today, and along the sides of the road were thousands of signs all screaming to me, “Pay attention to me!”  This is to such a degree that I find it difficult to find the signs I should really pay attention to, warning me to be careful, or to stop for others. Eventually, I arrived at my destination—a Trappist monastery.  And as I entered the building, there is a single sign which says, “Silence is deep as eternity.”

To seek the Spirit is to seek silence. The world shouts at us, clamors for our attentions, demands and cajoles and shakes us.  The Divine, however, is quiet, whispers in our ear, lulls us.  It is through the quiet that the Divine changes the world. While it might not seem like much of a strategy, we need to remember that the Spirit understands our souls better than we.  Our souls prefer to find (rather than to be given), and then they adopt what they have discovered.  Our souls wish to reveal secrets that most have not heard.  Our souls find no nourishment in the push-and-pull of merchandising, but in the silence that feeds.

The Spirit waits in the place of silence, waits for our silence so that we might meet him.  The Spirit does not want us distracted by the Many Things, but focused on the One.  Of course, our lives are full of the Many: the children, the internet, the busy street.  This is the place in which we live.  But the Spirit calls us, constantly, to silence so that we might find the One.  And the One is that which directs us through the Many so we can accomplish what is most significant. Until we spend regular time in silence, we will not find the important. 

Drink in silence as one might drink a huge mug of a hearty mead.  Become drunk on the joys of her pleasure.