Finding Our Heart in Silence

This summer I will be attending a discernment retreat for Benedictine scholastics, and in the registration materials, the following question was asked: “How comfortable are you with an extended time of silence?”

This question took me back to my time at Shantivanam House of Prayer. Beginning the fall after I graduated from college, I made private retreats there twice a year. While sitting on the porch of my hermitage under a canopy of trees and looking out over a small lake, I found my true self. As Michael Casey says, “Each of us needs to find our own silence. Unless we do, we will never find our hearts.”

As with chanting or singing, silence has a shape—a character. When we are centered in silence, we can feel a palpable depth, richness, at-homeness. I believe this is because, as Casey says, “…silence…facilitates the soul’s attention to God.” God is incarnate in the world, but without silence, we are too distracted to attend to that presence and absorb the wonder of it.

Silence cuts through the clutter and undergrowth of noise that we use to shield ourselves from knowing our own heart. We may be frightened of the passions, impulses, or desires that reside there—or worse yet, a sense of an inner emptiness. However, as Rainier Maria Rilke observed, “Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.” Our fear is a sign that our deepest treasure resides in our heart—the voice of God who calls us beloved and invites us to fullness of life.

At different times in our lives, we are invited to summon the courage to embrace silence so we can hear that voice. At the Mount, our Lenten practices help us edge into silence as we fast from talking during breakfast and start our morning and evening prayer with a period of quiet reflection. This discipline is a great gift in our noisy world. I’m grateful that Benedictines value and nurture silence and that my soul’s attention will be directed to God in a focused way during my discernment retreat this summer.