In the Silence
December 19, 2022 Blog
A LinkedIn post and an Advent visit to the monastery made me reflect on the place of silence in our lives.
The post was from someone who had invited me to connect some time back and to whom I had accepted. The message pointed out that we hadn't been in contact for a while and asked what my news was and finished with the question, "What are you shouting about in the sector?" I will reply in due course and will indeed share some of my news and thoughts but will also be confessing that I'm not much of a shouter really and am usually more drawn to the 'still, small voice.'
For many years I have gone to a monastery for a couple of days and nights at the end of Advent and how I have relished those visits at what is the darkest and coldest time of the year. On this occasion I arrived in the woods of deepest Sussex to the magical sight of a winter wonderland, following the heavy snowfall. The bare branches of the trees were festooned with snow and the ground was a thick white blanket. And, as happens when it snows, there is a particular hush that descends on the earth.
There isn't any shouting at the monastery. Not when I'm there at any rate. I'm sure the monks have their moments behind closed doors, like we all do. We're all human at the end of the day! Thankfully I have the chance to sink into the silence and into the ancient monastic rhythms and to enter a different space, one in which I start to hear and to see a bit differently: a bit more deeply, a bit more consciously, a bit more attentively. I wake in the so-still early hours and delight in the hooting of an owl. I go after breakfast (eaten, like all the meals, in silence) for a long walk to a nearby lake and enjoy the crunch of the frozen leaves underfoot. I marvel at the squeaking of a flock of ducks flying overhead in formation. And perhaps above all, I revel in that strange sound that Paul Simon famously sang about, the sound of silence.
When I was fourteen I was on a school trip to North Wales and we were hiking one day across the high and remote moorland when the guide asked us to stop dead still and to listen. Having grown up in a city, and in a house where my sister liked to have Radio 1 playing all the time, and where the TV was usually on non-stop, it was probably the first time I had heard that sound of silence. And what an amazing sound it was. It lasted just a few seconds before some of the others started giggling but it was a little moment of revelation for me.
In spite of the almost constant noise and shouting of the world, much of the 'stuff' of our lives goes on fairly quietly and hiddenly and silently. If it is true, as Henry Thoreau remarked, that most of us live lives of quiet desperation then it is perhaps true as well that many of our joyful, or just plain ordinary, moments pass by without any great fanfare. But no moment is lost or wasted in the grand scheme of the universe. Each experience, painful or joyful, public or private, forms us into the people we are. And I'm sure that all of those 'silent' moments touch us just as much as the more 'out there' events.
In a few days' time we will celebrate once again a most incredible event, but one which, had social media existed, was hardly going to be shouted about on the Twitter or Instagram feeds. Most people missed it at the time, or were looking elsewhere for the coming of a great messiah. Those who did know where to look were an unlikely bunch. Shepherds, who were probably rough hired hands, possibly a bit tipsy (after a little toddy to keep warm), and definitely outcasts in their community. And those three mysterious figures who had followed a star and came with the most peculiar presents. They had arrived in a dirty, smelly stable in a backwater town on the fringes of the Roman empire. And they had come to see a tiny baby, born to unmarried parents who were soon to become refugees. They had gone there to behold a God who comes to us amidst all of our mess and conflicts and disappointments and frustrations and broken relationships and broken dreams. A God who came to be just like us, just where we are.
Now maybe that's something worth shouting about.
PS Here is the song I wrote on one of my Advent stays at the monastery:
