Sunday Collection: Listen to the Silence

Photograph of Preveli Monastery by Wolfgang Staudt

This week I’ve been struck by the theme of quietness and listening in what I’ve read.

Cate’s post Short Days and Turnings speaks of an unsought moment of calm:

When I sat down here this morning, my mind was a tabula rasa for a while, no restless spirit, no impatience or agitation in evidence, just my smooth and empty screen – a palimpsest or canvas waiting for me to begin, but with no crying need to be scribed, described or filled up with words and brushstrokes.

Lucy talks about an experience of God’s grace in The Quiet Time, where she shares a reading. What stood out to me from it was this:

I may ask you to sit silent before Me, and I may speak no word that you could write. All the same that waiting with Me will bring comfort and Peace. Only friends who understand and love each other can wait silent in each other’s presence.

In Between Storms, Lisa talks of being alone for a while:

I simply watched the snow fall all day, and enjoyed the peace and quiet after the high school let out early. I was mostly alone in my building till late in the evening and it was quite a treat to have some genuine quiet for a few hours.

It’s part of being human to want time apart, to be quiet, to listen. Even children crave it. Think back to your childhood. Weren’t there times when you just wanted to crawl into your secret cave and listen to the voices in there?

People sometimes think of the practice of monastic silence as restrictive. Actually it is true freedom. To have times in your life when you know that conversation is not expected or sought. To communicate on deeper levels than with speech.

In this video, Yo-Yo Ma plays Sarabande by Bach with his extraordinary brilliance, and in the introduction he talks of the space between the notes. Again, space and simplicity allow us to hear.

And sometimes in our lives, unearthly communication can come to us from silence. In her autobiography The Joy of the Snow, Christian author Elizabeth Goudge writes of an extraordinary experience she had while living in the deep countryside in Devon:

I had never seen a snow-fall so beautiful and I was out in the garden at the first possible moment… The huge empty sky was deep blue, the air sparkling and clear. The sun was rising and the tree shadows lay blue across the sparkle of whiteness. The whole world was pure blue and white and it seemed that the sun had lit every crystal to a point of fire. There was a silence so absolute that it seemed a living presence. And then came the singing.

It was a solo voice, ringing out joy and praise. One would have said it was a woman’s voice, only could any woman sing like that, with such simplicity and beauty? It lasted for some minutes, and then ceased, and the deep silence came back once more. I stayed where I was, as rooted in the snow as the trees, but there was no return of the singing and so I went back to the cottage and mechanically began the first task of the day, raking out the ashes of the dead fire and lighting a new one. The light of the flames helped me to think. None of us, in the little group of dwellings in the valley had a voice much above a sparrow’s chirp … It was war-time and visitors from the outside world seldom came. Even if by some extraordinary chance some great singer had descended upon us, what would she be doing struggling down the steep lane from the village in deep snow at this hour of a cold morning? And wouldn’t I have seen her? I could see both lanes from the little terrace outside the cottage and had seen no one. There were only two explanations. Either I was mad or I had heard a seraph singing.

Have a blessed week, everyone.