Inner Silence

Jill Mitchell Art, https://www.facebook.com/pg/jillmitchelloriginalart/posts/

This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it. (Isaiah 30:15, NIV)

It's nearly 9:00 o'clock on a winter Wednesday morning. I've just read Father Richard Rohr's column on “Inner Silence,” the contemplative life that makes space for renewal and maintenance of the spirit. “Inner Silence,” I conclude, is the opposite—roughly—of thinking. Thinking/doing is mind-busyness while resting in inner silence is a gift to the mind as sleep is a gift to the body. (Rohr would probably recoil at this analogy.)

I'm obviously not in a contemplative state right now, at least not of the kind Rohr describes. I couldn't be writing these words if I was because this task takes thinking. And obviously, Rohr was not in that state either when he typed out his description of it.

But I'm very aware of sound and silence. I can hear the faint rhythm of the water pressure pump in the garage below, one car after another passes by, the refrigerator is humming, a door closes down the hall, the computer keys make a sound as I type. When I'm particularly attentive to sound, I realize that there exists always the faint thrum of white noise in the distance, the accumulation of the sounds of life both human and environmental. (Just now, the thermostat has kicked in and the radiators are ticking as hot water is released into their pipes and fins.)

Hearing, though, is but one of the five senses with which our minds apprehend the world around us. Sight is another, as are touch, smell and taste. To shut them all down in order to experience physical silence might justifiably be characterized as impossible. Our feet always feel our socks, our necks always feel our collars; the faint aroma of cigarette smoke seeps under a neighbour's door, under mine and assails my nostrils; I'm sipping on a coffee every time I close a paragraph—it's a pleasant taste. My eyelid itches—I scratch.

The minimizing of stimulation coming from myriad sources, though, has benefits that are hard to measure clinically, but are anecdotally supportable. Our minds get busy, busy in response to whatever our senses are picking up. The doorbell rings; we wonder who it could be, we reach a decision about whether or not to respond, we open the door and a friend or neighbour comes in and we talk, his subjects leading our minds down pathways of his choosing, layering them on top of whatever was preoccupying us before we opened the door.

In this complex, over-stimulating world, is it any wonder that our minds crave solitude? Silence? An opportunity just to sit for a time, and nothing else?

I'm reminded of a cartoon that was floating around in a Low German Facebook Group recently. A man is seated in an easy chair. Through a doorway to the kitchen where the wife is busy but unseen, her voice attempts to engage him in conversation--something like this liberally translated version:

She: Let's go for a walk.

He: No, I don't feel like it.

She: But a walk might do you good.

He: Probably, but now I just want to sit here.

She: You can't just sit! What are you doing while you're sitting?

He: I'm sitting and . . . and looking.

She: Looking? That's not a thing. You could at least be reading!

He: I just want to sit here and rest.

She: You could read your Bible while you're sitting, at least.

He: I've read it.

She: There's always something new in the Bible.

He: For now, I just want to sit here.

She: Well then I'll have to go for a walk by myself.

He: That would be wonderful . . . for you, I mean.

She: But what will you do while I'm gone.

He: I'm going to sit here. And rest. And look. That's all.

This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it. (Isaiah 30:15, NIV)