Sit in the quiet

Thursday, November 9, 2023

 Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Sit in the quiet

Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? And that the temple of God, which you are, is holy?

Lying in bed at dawn I felt a disquiet, one I am becoming accustomed to. Taking stock of the dreams I could remember, I realized the chaos in them had nothing to do with my spiritual friendship with God, and everything to do with my fear of being ultimately alone in the world.

This time I pulled back from the catastrophizing into a deep-breathing, empty, silence-filled wholeness. Within a breath or two I felt God filling the hole I had dug for myself (after pulling me out of there, of course).

I start most days sitting on the side of my bed and praying the Our Father. By the second or third line I have forgotten that I’m praying, as my mind sprints on ahead and then runs around in every which direction. I come back to the prayer, sort of. Words can mean much, or mean little. Hello darkness, my old friend.

Here there is light in the darkness,

beauty in the silence,

and comfort in the solitude.

To be alone with my God,

to be at home with myself,

this is what heaven is to me.

– Clarence Heller

 Later I sat in a small kiosk-y corner of Sam’s Club, waiting for a covid booster in my left arm and RSV vaccine in my right. It took my pharmacist Lauren a few minutes to get over to me. I did not pull out my iPhone. I did not think about my day. I did not mourn our decision to cancel both Sam’s and Costco accounts. Instead, I closed my eyes just a bit and concentrated on the ocean blue framed fabric that protected the kiosk from passers-by in the Sam’s Club store.

The fabric had no decoration. It was not ordained with any meaning. God does not reside in the fabric. As I sat, rather than letting my mind stay filled with details of my day or becoming determinedly spiritual by, for example, listing meaningful aspects of the Godhead, I settled into silence.

Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live, and there shall be abundant fish, for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh. Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow; their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail.

Later still our small group of spiritual directors based in Central Illinois met via Zoom. We thought together about what we could offer Jesus the baby for Christmas. And then what could we bring from our meeting with Jesus to offer those around us? Margaret and I suggested complementary opposites: words of hope and moments of silence.

We travel into stillness from more than one direction, including that of silence and those decked out with words. Oh God, make our reckoning true.

Paraphrasing the mystic pastor German pastor Meister Eckhart, Ron Rolheiser says that:

Silence is a privileged entry into the realm of God and into eternal life.  There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.

God says to me over and over, “Be still, and know that I am God.” When I practice shutting up the words in my mind, then the stillness will be full of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Or … .whatever we might call God in the sound of silence.

(Ezekiel 47, Psalm 46, 1 Corinthians 3, 2 Chronicles 7, John 2)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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