A LISTENING SILENCE
Someone has playfully suggested that angels have specific intellectual interests and privately direct our reading in order to bring out their pet topics. However that might be, those of you who know the excitement of finding all your books, podcasts, and conversations connecting in unplanned ways, can probably identify with this sense of divine inspiration.
Recently, the idea following me around {‘like a Mormon dating ad,’ is my usual phrase} is that of silence and contemplation. Whether I am attending a concert, listening to an online interview, or having a conversation with friends, silence and contemplation have been the shining thread weaving it all together.
It started with a book. Of the many good books I have read this year, the most meaningful and transformative has been Only the Lover Sings by Josef Pieper. I thought I would breeze through this slim volume, a collection of talks on art and contemplation. It took me several weeks, instead; I would read a page or two, and then put it by a few minutes or hours or days, to think about it.
The contemplative approach required by the book was its illustration; in a period of life which has been breathtakingly busy and stressful, this book has opened a space of quietness—for contemplating truths therein, and elsewhere.
I am rereading the book, and came again to the talk ‘Music and Silence’ while waiting for a Seraphic Fire concert to begin. Once the lights had dimmed, I was tuned to those ethereal voices as never before. The premier of Runestad’s cantata The Hope of Loving touched me as it might not have done without this new awareness of silence and contemplation.
Music is alone in creating a particular kind of silence, though by no means soundlessly... it makes a listening silence possible.—Pieper
Connections multiplied. While ironing laundry {primetime for contemplation!} I listened to the Jenny Rallens interview on memory and the cultivation of virtue. The classical and medieval view of memory was not as a static store of knowledge, but as a transformative process of becoming what we contemplate; this is changing the way I think about my memory work.
Our CM group continues to read and discuss the book When Children Love to Learn. A theme of our last meeting was giving students time —time to make those personal connections which make for a true education, time to contemplate.
One question that arose during our discussion was how we can better facilitate contemplation, for ourselves and for our children. I was able to draw on Pieper to make a few suggestions; and I expand on these below.
the setting for that Seraphic Fire concert
The necessary first step is to—
{WELCOME SILENCE}
We often fear silence; sometimes we call it ‘dead silence.’ It can seem like a kind of death, and we desperately fabricate signs of life to mask inward poverty, or lack of relational communication.
Consider that times of contemplative silence have given way in the church to constant sound {else we squirm in our seats}. Do we fill the void with silence because we fear it really is a void?
We struggle not only to accept auditory silence, but to accept any sense of quietness and space in our mental, social, and physical lives. It has been said that exhaustion is the new chic: the worthwhile day is the one crammed with scheduled activities; the worthwhile education is the one crammed with more facts; the worthwhile pace is the once that has us running on fumes.
‘I am so busy, I can barely stop to breathe!’ is not the {heavily exhaled} exclamation of someone to admire. Why do we glamorize over-exertion, inner turmoil, and sleepless nights? The life to admire is the one wisely lived.
‘Beware,’ Plato said, ‘the barrenness of a busy life.’ Do not fear silence and space as a closing off of life from the self, but rather welcome it as an opportunity to open the self to life. You are so much more than a vessel for the world’s offerings; you are a contemplator and creator. Give yourself room to work. Give yourself—not a dead silence, but—a ‘listening silence.’
And having come to this recognition and acceptance, it is time to—
{CLEAR A SPACE}
Every day the world—through television, radio, social media, books, advertisements—will grab your hand and drag you one way and the other, saying, ‘Look at this. This is important. This too is important. You need to know this. You need to worry about that. Look at what this person is doing. You need to do this too.’
It is up to you to take your hand back and say, ‘No. This is what is important.’ Get rid of things that pull you in directions you don’t want to go; get rid of things that get in your way; get rid of noise and clutter.
This will look different for each person and family. Here are specific actions I have taken for myself.
•Give the box the boot. We’ve lived more than ten years without the television and, like Wendell Berry, ‘congratulate ourselves on our deprivation.’ The commercials, the ‘news,’ the glut of images and hysteria and sub-par stories—we don’t need them. I promise.
•Turn off the radio, turn off the iPod, turn off the podcasts and the audiobooks, in the house and in the car. Walk and bike without the headphones. Listen to the birds, the wind, the people, even the traffic.
{I am not knocking music and podcasts! I listen to them frequently, to dance, to exercise, to occupy my mind while ironing laundry or cleaning the house. But when it becomes background mood-conditioning or noise, turn it off. See what happens.}
•Pare down the book-list. Read fewer books, better books, and read them more slowly and thoughtfully.
•Pare down the blog-roll and the YouTube subscriptions. Stop visiting sites that cause anxiety. Regularly fast from the internet for a set number of days.
•Clear out the schedule. Leave wide margins in the planner and leave them there. Say ‘no’ to good things, so you can say ‘yes’ to better things. {Schedule restful and restorative activities if you need to block the cancer of busyness.}
•Stop entertaining children and keeping them ‘busy.’ Stop doing the same for yourself. Boredom is the mother of creativity. Don’t be afraid of it; let it do its thing.
•Stop taking so many photos and videos. It diminishes your experience and memory of special moments. Live life in real time.
•As a people-pleaser, I find this one very difficult: Get some distance between yourself and those whose expectations, demands, and judgements sap your energy and joy.
Clearing a space is the necessary first step, but don’t leave that swept house open for the old demon and his seven friends. We’ve cleared it for a new purpose, which is to—
{CONTEMPLATE & CREATE}
I attempted to list these in two neatly separate collections of bullet points. It doesn’t work that way. Contemplation is, remember, a dynamic, transformative process. It demands creative response; we find we must sing or write or paint or love.
Sometimes it works the other way. We must sing or write or paint or love, and so we contemplate; we gaze on the world and on truth—learning to really see it, because our art demands it.
Who am I to figure out the difference? Each of these {again, personal} ideas contains both contemplation and creation.
•Really listen to one another, with care and love. Talk less, judge less, understand more. {We owe this to children no less than to adults.}
•Really listen to music. Sit down, make dinner, iron the laundry, but really listen. Even better would be to—
•Attend concerts. In South Florida, this is the season of outdoor concerts. Local churches and botanical gardens host free or inexpensive concerts. {Seraphic Fire offers free tickets for those under 30!}
•Really look at a piece of artwork. Charlotte Mason only assigned six works of a single artist in twice as many weeks. Could the students have studied more works? Yes, but at what cost to intimacy and appreciation?
•Read books slowly, stopping to read that profound thought over, or just to think about it. Keep a commonplace at hand. It takes longer to copy down a great passage than to underline it in the book; however, not only does copying by hand have a profound effect on memory {and therefore contemplation}, it trains discernment for essential points and exceptional statements.
•Memorize a longer passage of Scripture or a poem. Read it over, say it over, dwell on it for weeks and months—just that one passage or poem. Notice how both its message and language creeps into your thoughts, your speech, your prayers; this is what it means to ‘become what you contemplate.’
•Take time to contemplate the day’s events. Keep a journal. It is not necessary to journal every day, or to include every happening in your entries. As with your commonplace, learn to extract—like honey from the comb—the one thought, mood, image, discovery, or occurrence that you want to remember.
•Start a nature journal to draw, paint, or write about the world around you. Here are seven reasons to keep a nature journal.
Do you have ideas to add?
• white magnolia at our church •
November 10, 2015