Experiencing Silence – by Father Andrew

How often do you experience silence…?

 
How often do you experience silence? Well, the answer’s probably ‘never’, for most of us! Certainly in Walworth, there’s often just a lot of noise! Good noise, like children going to school or at playtime, people talking to each other, the buses carrying people around the city, the birds, the wind in our lovely trees. There’s also a lot of noise we’d rather not hear, perhaps all the traffic and car horns, sirens, people shouting at each other.
 
In reality none of us ever really experiences silence. Even in the countryside where I am right now, there’s a plane flying over head, the birds are having a good sing, a tractor carrying the harvest in; there’s wind in the trees, and the odd ‘baaaaaa’ from a sheep!
 
I think silence is so important for life, both our spiritual life and our general well-being as human beings. It can help us to get close to God, and it can help us to be at peace with our fellow human beings.
 
But is that what silence is really about? When we talk about silence in prayer, it’s not about finding the impossible place where there really is no noise at all – even then we’d hear our own breathing, our heartbeat, our shuffling.
 
One way of opening ourselves up to silence, is to sit down: inside or outside where you hope nobody is going to disturb you. You could set an alarm for 10 mins, or more if you have time…

• So, sit comfortably, but as if you’re just about to do something…
• and then to do nothing but sit.
• Begin to notice our breathing in the middle of all the noises around us.
• And sit.
• Allow your breathing to slow down (without trying to make it happen!).
• As Christians, we may slowly begin to say a prayer like ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’ which we can repeat slowly. Or we may simply say the holy name ‘Jesus… Jesus…’ (Of course, anyone can get a lot out of silence, and people of other faiths will have particular prayers, and people of no faith may simply wish to say ‘I come to silence…’)
• And then we can continue to sit, perhaps to stop repeating our phrase, and allow the silence to shape us and form us. To listen carefully, and allow God’s still, small voice to speak.
• There will often be distractions, but we gently ignore them and focus on the silence.
• When our time is finished, we might pray the Our Father or the Hail Mary, or another familiar prayer. And the trick, of course, is to carry a little bit of that silence with us, inside us, as we get up and carry on with everything we have to do, saying:

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and shall be for ever. Amen.

So why not try spending some time in silence, practising being silent, whenever you have a moment to spare. And now, I’d better get back to my silent day retreat!
 
Father Andrew