One doesn’t have to get very far into spiritual formation literature and talk before one encounters the category/discipline of “silence” in many popular authors and pastors. For the most part, it is a retrieval of the many writings and admonitions from the spiritual tradition on the practice/discipline. It is especially (though not exclusively) highlighted and emphasized in the monastic tradition, and remains a rule of life amongst certain Christian orders today still.
My concern in this post is about how we ought to think about silence as a practice, and some common misconceptions that I’ve observed (and also participated in).
Perhaps the most prominent space that silence occurs or is experienced is in prayer. Groups or individuals will have “times of silence.” But direction isn’t always given regarding how to experience that time, what to expect, what not to expect, what the heart’s temptations will be in that space, etc. And so each person just learns to cope with it in their own way (assuming they can’t just walk away from it altogether).
The overwhelming report that I get from talking to friends is that they feel guilty and ashamed when they find themselves distracted in prayer or in silence in prayer. They find that when they do enter into silence, their mind begins to wander, and it might wander for quite a while before they become conscious of it and try to “rein” their consciousness back to more holy “God-thoughts.” They assume that the ideal form of prayer is one where they experience zero distractions, and are always purely and only focused on God.
Well, yes and no.
It is not insignificant that they experience guilt and shame at their distractions in silence. In fact, it says quite a lot about who they think God is, and who they think they are before Him. Underneath that way of relating to God in silence, here is the picture that is actually being assumed: I’m in one corner of the room praying/sitting in silence, and God is at the other corner of the room trying to speak to me. When my mind wanders, God gets somewhat annoyed at it because it really does frustrate what he wants to do with/tell me. And so God has to wait for me to “collect myself and refocus” back on him so that the proper business of prayer can continue.
Right off the bat, we see one of the most arrogant beliefs that all of us hold to one degree or another – that we can control God. More specifically, that our failures and limitations act as strictures and boundary conditions to God. God is helpless against our short attention spans and weak wills. He has to wait for us to get ourselves back together before he can accomplish what he wants to in our lives.
And secondly, this image betrays the deep assumption that God is not already, in fact, in the very corner that I am in; that God is somehow distant and apart from my praying and silence. And so my distractions function as barriers or inhibitions to be with God. Never mind that we profess that nothing can separate us from the love of God – the truth is that all of us do believe, to one degree or another, that our sin/failure/weakness is capable of separating us from God.
Bad. Stop it.
No, if God truly has indwelt us by his own Holy Spirit, then he is never apart from us. In Paul’s language, the “I” and “Christ” are now so intimately and messily intertwined that language ultimately breaks down attempting to articulate that reality (“it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me…”). Our distractions are not a surprise to him, nor are they an obstacle to his purposes in our life. He sees and hears our distractions even before we do. This is what it means for the believer to be united to Christ by his Spirit.
How does that inform how we think about prayer and silence then?
Now as a believer, distractions in silence are no longer obstacles to be overcome but are transformed into means of grace; active invitations by God into our weakness. You set aside time in your day to pray, to spend ‘quiet time’ with God. Wonderful! But in your quiet time, you experience your mind wandering to the things you need to do later, worries about work, family, etc. That is God showing you where your heart truly is, where your treasures lie. They do not lie with God in that moment, they lie elsewhere, and that’s why you’re distracted. And God is not surprised by it. It is a fantasy to think that, by our will, we should be able to present ourselves so wholly and completely to God in the moment all the time. God, by his Spirit, is always active and communicative in the life of the believer. It just might not be the kind of activity and communication that we’d like.
In the awareness of your distraction, now tell God, “Gah! Father, I came to pray. You know I came to be silent and be with you! But look! There my heart goes again. I can’t even help it! That’s where my treasure is right now. I don’t want to be distracted, I want to focus on just you, but I can’t right now. Teach me about that treasure. Why does it weigh so heavy on me, why does it occupy so much of my mind right now? Are there areas where I don’t trust that your providence is enough? Are there issues where I don’t really believe that you will have my back? Search my heart o God, you know my anxious thoughts even before I do. Now teach me about them, what they mean for me, and ultimately who you are for me in the midst of them. Lead me into my sin/failure/weakness. Give me the fortitude to stare squarely at their depths and my utter inability to overcome them. Convince my heart of that inability. Guide me into your love in that place.”
Now that’s a very different conversation to be had in a time of silence. In our quest for peace and quiet, it is entirely possible to artificially silence our own heart and cut ourselves off from the work that God is actually doing in us. The things that he wants to show us about ourselves. We come to God for a revelation, for direction in life, for a word of comfort. But sometimes that’s not what he has for us. Sometimes (most of the time, I’d argue), he wants to start a conversation with us about the truth of our hearts. Not because he doesn’t want to comfort us or talk to us about nice things, but because he wants to have a real conversation with us in truth. About reality and not fantasy. About our heart as it actually is and not how we wished it was. You can silence your tongue but you cannot silence your heart. Neither is it your call to do so. Start a real conversation with God in the silence, let him lead you where he wants to go, not where you think you should be going.
This is not to say that there isn’t a place for learning to put aside distractions in silence – the spiritual tradition is a rich testimony to that practice. But I see that as a slightly different, perhaps dare I say even more “advanced” move in prayer. You start learning to do that only after you have first learnt to navigate the truth of your heart before God in silence, not before. It might also be the case that they are just different sorts of prayers altogether, with slightly different purposes. Whatever the case is, we need to be wary of not lapsing into thinking that either: 1) Our distractions are an insurmountable obstacle to God’s work and communicative act in our life, and 2) God is shocked and appalled at how distracted we are in the silence, and our utter inability to pray (if God wrote Rom. 8:26, he certainly already knows this).
So first learn how to use your distractions as a means of grace – to be with God in the truth of our heart. Don’t waste your life trying to wrestle your mind into zen-like quiet and submission in prayer. Stop resisting the purgative work of the Spirit trying to show you where all the treasures of your heart actually are other than God. Open to the truth. Open to love in that place.
Faith Seeking Communion 