Yo make some noise!
It appears my recent posts and discussions about silence have triggered some thought. Louisa brought a poetic offering and ever the contrarian, Laurence decided to make a blog post entitled Comfort in Sound.
My first ever Quaker meeting came after a long and exciting day touring the buildings of various religions in Southampton where I currently live in the UK. We started off in the Vedic temple where we had a talk (and some excellent food - yummy yummy). We visited the mosque where we had a talk and listened to a man sing from the Quran - that was beautiful. We visited the Sikhs, where we had a talk and another song, we visited the church where we had a talk, we visited the synagogue where we had a talk and finally we arrived at the Quakers where we sat in silence. Those were precious moments for me as someone taking the first steps into a more universalistic approach to religion and coming to learn from all faiths. There we were, silently contemplating, facing the centre, together, united in some commonality - love? friendship? I'm not sure - I didn't know most of the people there, but certainly the experience was one of deep togetherness.
The experience stayed with me and some months later I finally managed to get up on a Sunday morning and join a meeting - something I have done almost every Sunday morning since. Silent meetings are something new to me. Having spent years singing words, listening to the words of preachers and ministers and pastors - well everything was really very wordy!
But I've been thinking about another aspect of silence. Sometimes when people talk about silence they use words like
-centering down
-getting away from the stress of daily living
-forgetting everything else and focussing on God
-finding God in the silence
I don't like notions like retreating away from the world - Heaven forbid that I ever commence some kind of retreat to have some kind of imaginary experience with some imaginary God. (Does anyone spot a skeptic ;)?) I come back to some more traditional Christian roots here - most notably that which I've learned mostly from the Anglo-Catholics. The notion of incarnation - Christ is God in the flesh, God in the world. Incarnation puts to death the old notion of platonic dualism - that idea that spirit and matter are separate and reveals to us the unity of all things. God is wed to this world - without physical existence I do not believe there would be God, and it is in the embracing the whole that I find God - not in silent retreat.
I sense no more of the divine in the Quaker meeting house than I do at my computer, with my friends, sharing food, socialising down the pub, and engaging with voluntary work. If I'm honest - the times I most feel the presence of the divine is when I give something of myself to someone less fortunate than I am. When I offer my ear to someone who might otherwise be overlooked, when I cook a meal for someone who might not otherwise eat that evening. Don't get me wrong - I'm no Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day - but in those small steps I make towards living compassionately, I find something so precious that I'm prepared to call it divine. I'm not sure why I feel driven towards spending an hour or more in silence each week. I think it simply helps me to stop and remember so as to appreciate more deeply and fully everything else and also to connect with others committed to living deeply and compassionately.
So where does that leave me. Well, I'm not against words, but I think we are often too wordy. We talk a lot about faith and about religion and about God. People might notice that when God comes up in conversation I tend to feel awkward, may go quiet or might even change the subject. Whenever I hear people talk about God I think I must be an atheist so I am trying to give up on talking about God as I no longer see the point and have nothing to say.
Whenever I stop talking about God and simply live - I find a presence that appears to be 'all in all'. It is in fully embracing the realities of life - both the harsh and the beautiful that I find this presence - call it God, call it the Light, call it the Spirit, call it whatever you like. But my experience is that this presence is to be found in the whole of life - not in retreat from it.
So why my love of silence? I find that the silence reminds me of my connection to everything and the contemplation aspect of it enables me to appreciate more fully the life that I have, consider how I want to use it, and recognise the presence in everything that I do.
In the beginning was the word...and the word became flesh.
posted by Ruthie @ 9:02 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Most people have heard me carp about my denomination in some way or other - and my main charge has been that it's just too wordy. Everything seems to revolve around them. This has lead me to seeking out absence and contemplation in worship and communal faith, as well as private. But it is probably telling that I listen to music a hundred times more than I sit in front of my shrine.
There's probably something to be said for me tending to go against the flow, whatever it is. So when I find a couple of people singing the praises of silence, as it were, then I'll start instinctively wanting to point out the flipside. A Church in thrall to chat needs to shut up a for while, a Church easily taken to saying nothing needs to dare to speak. The challenge is to acknowledge the utter mystery of the divine in whatever our reaction to this varied life is. oh, maybe it's worldly piety.
But to say what?
Maybe we need to speak a little less about theology/God/faith/religion and a little more in the cause of justice?
Just a thought - and one that I really have to ask myself very seriously.
Ruthie
As we both tend to stress, theology is to be found within orthopraxy - by that I mean that faith is not a separate entity to justice, but the very holistic sense of it. And to me, justice is more than campaigning and banging publicly about the big stuff like poverty and dept. It's also about people's personal and social lives, about providing both the space and the visions within which they might explore their life in the light. Some people look for an empty room, without any impingement, at some times. Some people look for an image of the divine, some prophetic verse, that might bring the spirit to life in their lives. Spirituality is oft-neglected, though this is something that again I find particularly acutely in my own Church. It can often be quite dry and utilitarian - we're more than a charity and a campaigning group, the Church is about life in all it's fullness. And all of life, inward and outward, needs to be addressed by faith.
My own biggest question, to myself, is how best to serve others - here and elsewhere - with integrity to myself and them. It's far far wider than either a prayer meeting or a petition to end third world dept, this much I feel.
"Poor little talkative Christianity", to quote a famous phrase from E. M. Forster's A Passage to India.
Reticence, and discomfort at blithe talk about God, can be a very good sign. To quote Nicholas Lash, "Where the mystery of God himself is concerned it is paradoxical, but true, that the deeper a man's faith the more difficult he may find it to speak about God. One of the most disturbing features of much theological and devotional writing is that it seems to have so little sense of the incomprehensibility of God....The man who finds it easy to speak of God, or the ways of God with man, is the man whose mind and heart are not sufficiently open to the mystery to be dazzled and silenced by it." (Though I'm not sure, from your account, if this is quite your case.)
But I'm not at all sure that God is something we don't know, and Justice something we do. Rather, Justice seems to me every inch as mysterious and difficult to talk about as God Himself. And I find smooth and complacent talk about it disturbing. (This isn't just about your blog comment; this is something I was feeling at an event I attended last weekend, though very considerably less so than a year previously.)
Both of PL's comments resonate strongly with me, btw.
Wow, Ruthie. As someone who suddenlt has found a God to talk about, I am so deeply moved bt this post, and paradoxically(?) identify with it powerfully. For me, worship is not a time to withdraw from the world, to "escae to God", because I do find those powerful, vital, living moments of being Out There. But it is a time to gather myself, to acknowledge all those moments of Power in the world and spend undivided time contemplating and open to the Center and Source of them. (God, I'm disgusting with my Significant Capitalizations, but I can't help it)
The comments are also humbling and wonderful.
i must constantly remember this. I have a huge thrill of exhillaration when I think I've found words to express this power, to talk about God. I am seduced by the temptation of a life spent entirely in contemplation. I wish I could remember a quote I read about how God is profaned by our speech of him.
In not nearly enough silence,
Amanda
On a completely unrelated note, Ruthie, can you e-mail me at agareis at gmail dot com (take that, spammers) or call me if you still have my number? I wanna ask you something (nothing drastic!) and can't find your contact info.
Amanda
Hi Ruthie, I am enjoying reading your blog and following along in your journey. It is a journey for all of us, knowing what to believe... My family has Quaker roots that go way back...my mother's side of the family can trace it's Quaker roots back to England. She was raised in New Jersey, in a "traditional" silent meeting for worship, and went to meeting in an old meeting house. My father was raised in Indiana, in a Quaker meeting that had a minister, and was more "talkative" and organized. I was raised in a more informal meeting, basically silent, some talking, but loosely structured and normally our meetings were held in a small chapel at the college where my dad taught or in someone's living room. The mom's conducted Sunday school for the kids, and aside from art projects and learning about Quakerism we would often take long walks in the woods and see God's touches in the world around us. We would see his kiss on a milkweed pod, or hear his sound in the call of a morning dove. And as kids we learned to sit together and gradually grow into the silence.
I married a man who was raised as a Catholic but rejects the Catholic faith. He was the first person, that when I met him, knew what Quakerism was about, felt comfortable with the Quaker ways. It was so nice that I didn't have to explain it to him. He got it right away. I think that is what drew me to him in the first place!
Today, while I don't attend a "formal" meeting for Quaker worship, I don't consider myself a "lapsed" Quaker, while my husband does consider himself a lapsed Catholic...or one who has rejected that faith all together. I guess, despite not attending "church", I feel that I practice it every day in my every day life. My meeting can be sitting in the steam room after a workout and collecting & quieting my thoughts. It can be working in the garden where I am touching the earth and pulling weeds and my thoughts turn inward as I am working and I feel connected to the tangible world and I feel the life force that binds us together. Or, sometimes it is just walking and seeing the golden light animate the leaves of a tree. That is when I truly feel spiritual. The beauty humbles me and in the silence my thoughts find God. So, I don't think you find God necessarily just sitting in silence, it is a practice that you take into the world and allows you to view it through new eyes.
A good Quaker sermon, Ruthie-Annie. Much of it resonates to my feelings and perspective. Silence for me is most effectual in solitude. Meeting is social. We are there to love one another (speaking theologically). You know when you're doing God's will (at meeting or at the marketplace). Jesus spent time and himself at both places. We also may, God willing.
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