17/09/2018

Good morning

Being quiet is not something that is easily found today when we are distracted by bright lights, the ring of a mobile phone or the sound of a text message. We are pulled at by worldly matters and rarely hear music above noise, let alone the sounds of silence.

Whilst silence is regarded as an authentic medium of prayer, it isn’t common religious practice even though the ability to listen to God in quiet is a common biblical theme.

As the Psalmist says, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him”.

What do you say to God when you pray? Mother Theresa of Calcutta was once asked. ‘I don’t say anything’, she replied, ‘I just listen.’ ‘And when you listen’, she was asked again, ‘what does God say?’ ‘He doesn’t say anything,’ she replied, ‘He just listens.’

Silence offers a way to ponder and listen for the divine, the unsayable and inexplicable.

Christian Religious Orders regularly observe silence and Quakers are noted for their tradition of silent ‘waiting upon the Lord’. As Elijah discovered on a ledge in a cave, God is not to be found in the fire, or the whirlwind, or in the earthquake but in a still small voice. Some prefer silence because they believe in a God who speaks, albeit quietly.

Thomas Merton held that the only words required of a priest were those of the Mass since some things are so mysterious that one must be silent to understand them. It is not power that compels silence here, but the inadequacy of any attempt at communication. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said, ’Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.’

Or as the Books of Ecclesiastes has it, “There is a time to keep quiet, and a time to speak.” (3:7)

Amen.