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Barriers to Silence
July 10, 2005

Do you ever stop and think about how many words we end up saying in a day? If we aren't talking, we are listening to others talk. Believe it or not, I will end up saying about 1500 words, give or take in my meditation this morning.

Yesterday we were sitting eating lunch together as a family and during a pause in the conversation, Lydia observed, "Ah…how nice…no one is talking."

The late Henri Nouwen made this observation about words and their impact on us, "Over the last decades we have been inundated by a torrent of words. Wherever we go we're surrounded by words: words softly whispered, loudly proclaimed, angrily screamed; words spoken, recited, or sung, words on records, in books, on walls, in the sky; words in many sounds, many colors, many forms; words to be heard, read, seen, glanced at; words which flicker on and off, move slowly, dance, jump, wiggle. Words, words, words! They form the floor, walls, and ceiling of our existence."
Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart

Recently I was driving through Los Angeles, and suddenly I had the strange sensation of driving through a huge dictionary. Wherever I looked there were words trying to take my eyes off the road. They said, 'Use me, take me, buy me, drink me, smell me, touch me, kiss me, sleep with me.'

One of the main problems is that in this chatty society, silence has become a fearful thing. For most people, silence creates itchiness and nervousness. Many experience silence, not as full and rich, but as empty and hollow. For them silence is like a gaping abyss which can swallow them up. As soon as a minister says during a worship service, 'Let's be silent for a few moments,' people tend to become restless and preoccupied with only one thought: 'When will this be over?"

Granted, some of this is temperament and personality. But I think a great many of us find it easier to be surrounded with words than to be surrounded with silence. It is like the man who was invited to a Quaker home for dinner where it was their custom to begin the meal with silence. This man later told his friends, "We sat down to eat and there was this awkward silence, so I told a joke and broke the ice."

What is it about silence that makes us feel "Itchy and nervous"? Karen Little came up to me after meeting the first Sunday I spoke on holy silence and said something that I haven't been able to forget. "Maybe the reason some people find silence so unpleasant is because it has been a weapon used against them in a relationship. They have had to endure stony silence in a marriage or from a parent, or from a close friend… and so silence might be associated with pain and rejection and feeling unloved."

Most of us feel pretty awful being given the "silent treatment," don't we? If this is what comes up for us in the silence we might work pretty hard to avoid it altogether.

I've entitled this series "Holy Silence" because we are not focusing on merely a silence where there is no one talking but a silence of relationship with the Living Christ, our Ever Present Teacher and Companion on the journey. Holy Silence is that inward place where we can hear the still small voice of God speaking truth into our lives. I like to think of holy silence as prayerful listening or expectant waiting.

It was Karen's comment that made me realize I couldn't do a series on Holy Silence without talking about one of the most significant barriers to holy silence…Fear. What do you think it is that we are afraid of? Maybe it is the fear of intimacy, the fear of being known, the fear of sitting still long enough to feel our pain, the fear that we might be asked to change destructive behaviors, maybe it is even the nagging fear that God might not be there after all.

The paradoxical thing for me is that whenever God is able to break through my resistance, I usually feel some degree of fear. Why is this? "Because humans are patterned creatures, and God is a pattern breaker." God wants to heal us, to transform our weakness into strength and we fear transformation. It's crazy, but we do. It feels easier to stay with what we know, even if we are miserable. If we have spent a large part of our life and energy denying our pain and running from the truth, this will have become an ingrained pattern for us and one that is extremely difficult to break out of. If we regularly numb out and self medicate our emotional and spiritual pain with all kinds of other things, just the mere thought of entering into a silence of relationship with God will scare us to death. We might have to change. We might have to make some difficult choices and go in a completely different direction. And this can be pretty scary.

Carl Jung said, "there is no coming to consciousness without pain." If we want to live our lives fully we will have to face our pain.

It was Thomas Merton who said; "The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer."

I'm convinced that fear is the biggest barrier to growth and change in our lives. It has taken me a long time to learn this. I've heard some of you say when you first came to an unprogrammed worship that you felt raw and vulnerable in the silence and felt like crying, and you didn't even know exactly why. In fact you feared what might surface in the silence, especially in a room full of people.

As scary as this kind of vulnerability can be, it is so much better than the dishonest, chronic pain of denial. Our path to intimacy with God is through the gate of openness and honesty. Holy silence is the place where this kind of honesty and openness can be nurtured in us. But it will only happen when we trust that holy silence is a place of love.

By the time you are my age, you realize that "life is hard" and that we carry with us an accumulation of scars. "Healing our scars is a continuous process of growing in our ability to let love into our injured hearts." Knowing we are loved is what makes working through our pain possible. If we feel shamed and judged when we are sitting in silence, we will fear silence.

I am still learning to trust that holy silence is full of love, grace, forgiveness and acceptance. It is not about being good enough…it's about being real.

I wonder if it is harder to trust that holy silence is this kind of tender relationship, if we have not experienced this in our most intimate of relationships, especially from our parents. If those primary relationships early in life were full of shame and judging we may struggle with accepting God's love.

The writer of 1 John says it this way… "God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgement Day-our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life-fear of death, fear of judgement-is one not fully formed in love."

I take courage when I realize that the two words used most often together in scripture are "Fear not." God has often reassured me with this truth when I have been sitting and waiting in silence, whether it is here during meeting for worship or when I am alone during the week…

In the stillness, God says, "Fear not," when I am about to take a step into unfamiliar territory…
In the stillness, God says, "Fear not," when I am being nudged to change my perspective in a situation…
In the stillness, God says, "Fear not," when I am about to venture out of my old familiar patterns of self doubt…
In the stillness, God says, "Fear not," when I am feeling anxious about all the things that are completely out of my control…

In the stillness God says, "Fear not." And over and over again in my times of holy silence I hear these comforting words…"Faith, don't be afraid because my love for you is absolutely perfect. Trust in that love." God loves us and suffers with us and within the chaos and confusion that most of us will experience to varying degrees throughout our lives, we are encircled in the loving arms of God.

Letting go of our fear and relaxing into God's loving presence, into that holy silence, if you will, takes time and patience. "Slow" is one of those rare words in our vocabulary. We don't want it to take time…We don't want it to be hard… We want instant healing and immediate pain relief …but I encourage you to trust the process of listening and expectant waiting … From experience, I know that I will remain stuck and hinder my spiritual growth when I constantly avoid what I fear.

Start where you are…with the faith you have today… and if you haven't already; take that first step into holy silence.

I leave you with these reassuring words from the prophet Isaiah, "Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand." Amen.