Listening to the Silence

I collect a few things. Books. Masks. Pitchers and creamers (question to self: what is it I long to pour forth?). Funky hand-made purses. People with problems.

Here’s what I’d really like to collect: Silence.

A friend, Michael Cogdill, commented on my first post about my friend Jane, saying it was a testimony to the power of her silence. He’s right. She couldn’t speak the final months of her life, yet the quality of grace and joy and serenity in her silence set the tone for everything that took place around her in those months.

At a recent Centering Prayer workshop, the following quote from 13th Century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi came up more than once: Silence is the language of God; all else is poor translation. I take that to mean that I am most likely to find myself fully in Divine presence when I am silent; and most likely to arrive at clarity when I listen to that silence.

Yet we’ve created a culture that doesn’t allow us our silence. We’re blasted with music when we walk into a mall or a restaurant. We’re so afraid of our own company that we plug ourselves into music when we walk or bike. We leave our TVs on all day long for background noise. Even in prayer, we are far more likely to speak than we are to simply rest there. Does God really measure the sincerity of our prayers by their volume or their length? Have we lost the ability to be still and know…

What are we so afraid of hearing if we listen to the language of God?

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