The Slow Path to True Silence
I have a noisy life.
Oh, you too? I thought that might be the case.
Of course, by “noisy,” we don’t always mean audibly noisy. We mean noisy inside our own minds, don’t we? Yes, I have noisy children who chatter endlessly, who get loud in play and louder in distress or indignation, children who tend to get quiet only in sleep, but that’s really not what we’re talking about. We are talking about the “noisy” of this fast-spinning world that never shuts off, and our brains that have stopped shutting off because of it. The responsibilities of adult life in the modern world are noisy. The internet is noisy. Anxiety is noisy. Depression is noisy. Comparison is noisy.
The enemy is noisy.
Sometimes the noise is so hard to overcome that I can’t even read a novel. My mind just won’t stop its endless hum and engage the world on the pages. In those moments, the only way I can get relief is to watch something on TV–to overcome the noise within by adding noise without.
Two years ago now, I decided I’d had enough of the noise. I was almost desperate for a reprieve, for an escape. I was thinking about this one morning, in the external silence of my 5 a.m. house, when I suddenly remembered a silent retreat I’d gone on twelve years before at the end of a summer ministry project. We–my team and I–spent a day and a half at a Catholic retreat center in Illinois. We worshipped, we read and discussed Scripture, we prayed, we shared meals, but in between those things, we were silent. I remember the silence felt both like this enormous presence and like a relief of pressure. None of us had ever done anything like it.
I remember that the retreat center was an environment conducive to silence in that it was not noisy–in the audible sense as well as visually. The rooms and furniture were simple and spare. Any decoration was of a spiritual or natural kind. My room, with its narrow bed, bedside table, desk, and chair, was small and white and clean. The grounds were green and tree-lined. There were no TVs, no computers. We were asked to turn off our phones.
I remember lying on my back on a grassy slope of lawn and watching the clouds move across the sky. I remember leaving the retreat center feeling rested and refreshed in a way I had never experienced before.
So at 5 a.m. on that autumn morning two years ago, I knew suddenly what I longed for: to feel again like I’d felt on that silent retreat. To be in a space fully separated from the noise of my everyday life. To get into a space of true silence.
It’s ironic, I realize, but I opened my laptop and googled “women’s silent retreat Memphis.” Almost too easily to be believed, I found a nearby (three miles away, literally) retreat center that offered monthly half-day silent retreats for women. It had been there all along.
I signed up to attend at the first opportunity. I remember that first morning, the excitement I felt as I turned into the retreat center’s entrance, a dirt drive that led through woods filled with bare trees. I felt like I was crossing a threshold, stepping behind a veil.
Join me over at The Glorious Table to read the rest.
