A few weeks ago, I was on retreat at a hermitage in lower Michigan. It was grand. But it was odd for there was no Wi-Fi, no phone connection, no meals provided, no town nearby. But there was . . . quiet. I loved it. Of course it is weird at first and hard to adjust. But by the end, I was in heaven.
Most of us don’t have enough quiet. Even with the pandemic (when we don’t have our usually go-tos such as friends to hang out with, movies to attend, big crowds at sporting events) many of us have found a way to fill up our space with TV, music streaming, podcasts, I admit that I am guilty of this. I often feel that I need to have the radio on to news, so that I don’t miss something big.
Most of us are noise-addicted. We are afraid of silence. So think about what your day; do you have any quiet time at all? That is, we wake up to music, have the TV on during breakfast, streaming music in the shower, meetings during lunch. Music while we’re put on hold, evenings filled with Netflix, going to bed with another podcast.
In the second reading, St. Paul writes, “I want you to be free of anxieties, worries.” If you have worries now, maybe it’s time to try something different. What would it be like for you to take time each day for a bit of solitude? It doesn’t have to be a whole week, or a whole hour. Maybe just a few minutes . . . when you wake up, or before you go to sleep. During your coffee break? As you drive to school? Before the game. What do you do? Nothing. Just breathe.
Nest Sunday is the Super Bowl and we will hear about official sponsors:
“This car is the official sponsor of the NFL”
“This beer is the official sponsor of Super Bowl 55.”
“This hemorrhoid cream is the official sponsor of couch potatoes who haven’t missed a football game since last September.”
Well I believe that “Quiet, or silence, is the proud sponsor of God.”
You don’t need a lot of words to connect to God. In fact, silence is where prayer begins and where we first begin to hear God talk to us.
In the gospel Jesus yells at the demons inside the man. Jesus doesn’t say “be gone” or “be healed” . . . Jesus says “be quiet!” “Quiet” Probably if Jesus were here, looking at the demons in our midst….he say the same thing. “Quiet!”
Quiet to the demons that have us going and doing all the time.
Quiet to the demons that say “we’ll miss out on something important without news on.”
Quiet to the demons that forbid us to listen to another’s pain with commenting
Quiet to the demons that make us believe music helps us work out better
Quiet to the demons that say coming to church early is a waste of precious time
Quiet to the demons that you must respond to that post, that tweet, that
Quiet to the demons that you just “gotta share this gossip”
Quiet to the demons that say good praying is when you do all the talking.
Silence is the best response to mystery. People in love know that. People in love with God know that. In stillness we find strength and wisdom, in the quiet of non-action we are led to what would give us spiritual nurture. Miester Eckhart, the 14c. mystic says, “nothing in all creation is so like God, as stillness.”
It’s like the story of pious man who lived in India. Every day a Sanskrit scholar would come to his house and read aloud a few soul-stirring spiritual teaching from the Holy books. The man listened devotedly to these discourses every day. Well the man also had a bird, a talking bird, who stayed in a big cage in the same room where these talks were given, so the bird also listened to these talks.
One day the bird spoke to its master, “Could you please tell me what benefit you derive from these spiritual talks?” The man answered, “You dumb bird, you don’t understand that these talks will liberate me, free me from bondage.” So the bird answered, “Well you’ve been listening to these talks for the past two years, and I don’t see any changes in you. What kind of change is supposed to happen?”
“Oh you dumb bird you don’t understand anything.” Well from that moment on, the bird stopped talking to the man, the bird stopped talking and singing all together. It even stopped eating. It became absolutely quiet. The man would talk to the bird, and it said nothing. The man put food in the cage, it never touched it.
One day the man looked at the bird and it wasn’t moving at all. He poked at the bird….nothing. He felt so bad. He reached in the cage and gently took the bird out of the cage and laid it on the floor. Well finally the bird opened one eye, then the other, looked around and in a twinkling flapped its wings and fly out the window. The bird taught. The man learned. Silence will set you free.