A Resonant Silence: Lent and The Commitment to Contemplation

 

A Resonant Silence

Lent and the Commitment to Contemplation

First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh

March 16, 2014

Rev. Robin Landerman Zucker

         Some 20 years ago, my former husband David and I had a rare get-away from work, house, kids, chores, the cat, hamster, and the hermit crab! We chose as our destination a glorious center for Yoga and Spirituality called Kripalu in Lenox, MA where relaxation and invigoration come together in a wonderful retreat-like experience in the Berkshire countryside. 

As I read the welcome packet over a cup of herbal tea upon arrival on Friday afternoon, my heart leapt in my chest as I learned that Breakfast was a "silent meal." No talking, no schmoozing, just the sound of jaws chewing on vegan granola and scrambled tofu and spoons clinking against bowls of organic yogurt topped with brewer’s yeast and agave nectar, throughout Kripalu's cavernous, light-drenched dining room.  Somebody help me! 

          Maybe you've noticed that I am  an unabashedly verbal person. I love words, puns, word games, conversation, writing, naming things, and poetry. I'm delighted when one of you invites me to get together for a chat, and my learning style is dialogic -- meaning that I process information best through discussion. Some of you may be this way, too. Stop in -- we'll talk about it!

Silence can be a challenge for me; and that first morning at Kripalu was enough to give me the willies and the giggles all at once. But as the weekend progressed, I relaxed a bit into the welcoming tranquility of silence as my regular, unrelenting Universe of noise receded farther and farther away from the Berkshires. I worked at not being unnerved by silence or put off by the hard work of letting go into the Yogic meditation known as "Savasana” (corpse pose)  Heck,  by Sunday I was content to be mostly silent at lunch. Really...I know! Amazing!

Since that first weekend, I have logged 17 visits at Kripalu and silent breakfast is a cakewalk. I’ve noticed some retreaters wearing badges like this one that says, “In loving silence,” announcing that they will not speak during their entire stay. At the start of visit 15, I took one thinking I might try it. Epic fail. God bless their sweet silent souls.

          For a myriad of reasons, we live in a society that has trained our hearing sense to prefer (or at least expect) the clamor of human words and noise over the still small voice of the Spirit that resonate in the silences. We are perpetually distracted by radios, TVs, music, conversation, traffic, beeping cell phones, the static of our thinking minds; the opening words and readings and benedictions and announcements of our highly verbal liturgy. Some of us welcome this distraction, while others aren't even aware of the condition.  It's just "normal" -- a dissonant Universe of white noise.

Some of us are squeamish with silence in the segues of our lives.  A restless voice booms, "Hey Ho, Let's Go," when the silence becomes just a tad too real, noticeable, or prolonged.   

Earlier, in our reading by Maitreya, (Ma-trey-ah)  he asks: "Why are we afraid of silence?" In response, I'd argue that silence is misunderstood as the antithesis of substance and productivity. And because silence is often relegated to the "dark night of the soul," it can be labeled as depressing and lonely. Some theologians even consider it the playground of Satan!

Then again, much of our disdain for silence may reside in our acclimation to a world bloated with noise. As Maitreya points out, "There is little quiet in our lives. In the silence, you can listen to the soul. In silence, you can speak to the Divine. This does not mean you have to sit in silence, stiff and upright."  "No," he writes,  "it means you need to be aware of the quiet, listen to it, and not be afraid of it."

        As I see it, Maitreya hits the mark squarely when he suggests that our  fear  of silence arises from the inevitable discomfort we're likely to experience as issues, authentic feelings, pain, and longing bubble up in active contemplation. Sometimes, the still, small voice says things to us we sorely need to hear, but which are sorely hard to hear.

There is an old joke that UUs are Quakers who don’t know how to shut up. There may be some truth in that. But this morning, we will try, by experimented a bit with silence, adding a few minutes here and there throughout the liturgy to our usual 10-60 seconds of quiet.

While this added silence may make a number of you squirm (given that 60 seconds feels endless to some),my hope is that it will provide a taste of a valuable spiritual practice we can each choose to cultivate in our everyday lives --dropping more deeply into a resonant silence where we grow to recognize and listen to the voice, still and small, deep within all. 

And, where we might experience, as a  result,  a greater spiritual well being that could impact profoundly on other areas of our lives -- our work and relationships, our mental and physical health, our self-esteem and our sense of belonging on this planet. 

In a fascinating essay on this topic, the scholar Rubin Gotesky notes that "Silence in religious experience has always been considered one of the roots for attaining ultimate union with God, the Absolute, the "Arch-Good," Nirvana, or whatever humankind has deemed sacred."

It is the language of the heart. The Quakers perceived silence as essential for preparing the soul for spiritual experiences, and Pythagoras is said to have required of his initiates one to five years of absolute silence in order for them to attain a correct approach to knowledge.

         In the Old Testament, silence is a vehicle for meeting the Holy as well as becoming wise. In Psalm 46, we find the famed admonition: "Be still and know that I am God."  As a means of cultivating wisdom, silence is emphasized in Ecclesiastes in sayings such as: "A wise man will keep quiet till the right moment, but a garrulous fool will always misjudge it." I'd like to have that embroidered on a pillow!

In the New Testament, little is said directly concerning the use of silence. Jesus does enjoin his followers to seek isolation and the silence of solitary prayer, but there is no special emphasis on silence as a means of attaining union with God or Self.

           Silence acquires extraordinary status among the Christian mystics and monks, beginning with the Desert Fathers of the first century. These ascetics emphasized the importance of silence in a variety of significant modes -- flight from man, non-speech, quietude, solitude, silent prayer, and contemplation, but they used these modes according to their own inner requirements.

It wasn’t until the formation of later monastic orders, such as the Benedictines, that we find institutionalized rules applying to silence. (Such as the two words our hapless monk was permitted to speak every five years in the amusing anecdote we heard earlier in our service).

          Buddha was famously known as "The Silent Sage." In fact, Buddhism, at its core, extols serenity and silence as essential traits of an enlightened being. Silence, in particular, is perceived as an indispensable means of moving towards an interior experience of the Truth. Thus, silence and contemplation as a way to the Truth is itself the Truth. A major question arises, though: how is this ideal form of silence to be embraced, especially for us worldly folk who are not cloistered in monasteries?

         We don’t have the luxury to retreat to place like Kripalu every time we need a silent Sabbath and we certainly can’t encamp to a mountaintop cave and sit on a cushion facing the wall for the rest of our days. And, frankly, that isn’t real world spiritual growth anyway.

        Buddha himself provides the answer in the virtues of emptiness. As long as a person is willing to become empty of all forms of desire and attachment; if a person is willing to let go of control, the path of silence is very accessible. Like tranquil silence, emptiness cannot really be expressed or captured. But, unlike negative emptiness that represents scarcity, the sublime emptiness Buddha extolled is full of spirit. It is a kind of spaciousness, rather than a barren landscape.

         Thomas Merton, the beloved Trappist monk, echoes Buddha in telling us: "The true contemplative is not the one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect or anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Spirit in silence, and when he is "answered," it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by silence itself suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the still, small voice.

"What appears to be emptiness," Merton teaches us, " is actually pure being, pure love, pure freedom, pure Spirit."

         Each year, as the 40-day season of Lent arrives (as it did on Ash Wednesday, March 5th) millions of modern Christians commit themselves to active contemplation and to some form of personal sacrifice in preparation for Easter. The Lenten season coincides, by the way,  with the forty days spent by Jesus fasting and praying in the wilderness.  Even though we were committed UUs, we can join with our Christian neighbors in letting go of something we consider detrimental in our lives and add something that enriches it. Giving up chocolate for Lent this year? Facebook? Angry Birds or Candy Crush? If this helps you, ok.

As for me, I'm letting go to the best of my ability, of succumbing to non-stop chitchat and noise for Lent, and committing myself to a season of more active contemplation. Will you join me?

Sadly, after finally achieved the ability to drop into silence within the past decade, silence went away when I developed tinnitus (ringing in the ears) as I experienced some hearing loss. Now there is no real silence, ever. So, if you are able to find silence, cherish it and drop in. With tinnitus, meditation takes on a different frequency, but I still try to quiet my mind and contemplate, even if my head is perpetually buzzing.

The late, great Rev. Peter Gomes, long-time Minister of Harvard's Memorial Church, prepared a pamphlet for students entitled, "How to Keep a Good Lent." I'll tell you that nowhere in this slim treatise does the Right Reverend Mr. Gomes mention chocolate! He does, however, suggest "three S's: Silence, Study, and Service." Regarding silence, he echoes Maitreya's words, writing that  "the world is a noisy place, and even our small corner of it has more than its fair share of noise. Silence is therefore a rare and precious thing.

Gomes recommends fifteen minutes of silent reflection one day per week of Lent.  I'd counter with an alternate suggestion that you attempt a minimum of five minutes per day of absolute silence in which you do nothing at all  - no problem solving, no organizing, not even high thinking. Let your spirit, your mind, and your body relax. Breathe deeply and be aware that you are, in fact, breathing! Wait in silence for the still, small voice. Listen for what the Sufi poet Rumi called "the pure, hollow note."

         Of course, you must put aside this time and take it at least as seriously as you would five minutes of listening to NPR or skimming your junk e-mail.  Time and noise are evil twins that conspire to undermine us. But, don't give up! You might find that your five minutes fits best  at the start of the day, or at mid-day, or right before evening begins. Experiment. Take small one minute silent Sabbaths through out the day. Once you find your niche, and silence becomes natural, you may crave more, and you’ll wonder how you got along before without this daily dose of contemplation.

       As you allow silence to wash over you like a cleansing wave, you may experience a Mysterious Presence that nurtures from within. If you are Humanist, this presence may be the animating spark of life felt more vibrantly. If you are more attuned with a Creator God, the presence may take the form of a protector or soul friend.

If you are a Pantheist or Pagan, it may be experienced as a "merging" with the natural world. If you are an atheist, and this all sounds like religious mumbo-jumbo to you, consider how the silence may simply help you become more in touch with your authentic self, your fears, and your strengths.  

Believe me -- Rev.  Verbal up here knows just how hard it is to zip it! to hush up! to quit yapping! All of us mere mortals, myself included,  must experience both the agony and the ecstasy of silence, just as the mystics and monks have for centuries.

"Words enough have been spoken," writes the Rev. Kim Beach, and melodies enough have been sung. Find now your own way in quiet. In the end, you and I are left with ourselves. We have only the rustling of others and the noise of the world to distract us."  Surely, distractions there will always be. But, after a while we can learn to tame the dissonance as we find a home in that interior place where the still small voice beckons to us. The calm soul of all things meets us with a whisper and an embrace at the door of a tabernacle of resonant silence.

For Lent, and for  all the days that follow, may we open that door with joyful surrender and find a stillness just over the threshold. Let us join together in a silence.

©  2014 Rev. Robin Landerman Zucker. All rights reserved. Rev. Zucker and cited authors/sources may be quoted with proper attribution.