Friday Reflections, August 24, 2012

Today's reflection is a brief excerpt from Richard Rohr about silence, and it is moving me deeply.

Silence is the language of God, and the only language deep enough to absorb all the contradictions and failures that we are holding against ourselves. God loves us silently, because God has no case to make against us. Silent communion absorbs our self-hatred, as every lover knows.
(Richard Rohr -Adapted from Simplicity, p. 97)

New Month

It's March.  The second day of March.  How did it already get to be March?

I've been home from my vacation for several days, and I find I'm struggling to find words for this space, beyond the nightly Daily 5 posts.

That happens almost every time I go away.

I come back and find that silence has spread from an imposition of timing to a general silence of thoughts made for public space.

It seems that creating space for silence somehow imposes it more broadly.

And, honestly, this week is busy, and creating the time to write this week has been a bit challenging too.

It's a full, full week that is kicking off this new month.

A week with appointments, a couple of midterm exams, and a whole day scheduled out of town with a very dear friend who is rarely on the same continent as me.

Once I hit the weekend, I'm committed to getting back into the swing of blogging.  To getting some posts written and scheduled to go live.

Until then, though, it'll probably still be quiet around here (unless, of course, inspiration strikes!)

Silenced

Earlier this week I came across this post at Alece's blog.

"Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter."  Martin Luther King

I left Alece's post open in a tab in my browser for several days, looking at it, praying, thinking, remembering.

I was thinking about one specific conversation.  About a moment of being silenced.  About feeling like I couldn't safely express myself, and about the growing impact of silence, the sense of becoming invisible and unable to be heard.

I find myself wondering, sometimes, if there is a statute of limitations on hard things.  Especially hard things that involve people you care about.  How do you talk about them?  Do you talk of them at all?  Are vague references best?

I have no desire to lash out, really, but I've felt silenced and struggled with that.

Earlier this summer I sat outside a coffee shop called "Higher Ground" with a new friend, and, having shared some of the journey of the last number of years with her, she asked if there was anyone I'd been able to talk to about what I'd shared.

Her question stuck with me, probably because I'd felt so silenced.

My life is changing right now.  A new beginning, I suppose, or at least I pray it is.

And I've thought all week about the quote from Martin Luther King - about how something fundamentally ended in my life when that silence began to be imposed.

I'm grieving those things that were lost, and thankful for new beginnings.

Richard Rohr on Silence

Yesterday's meditation from Richard Rohr struck me deeply, and I wanted to share it in its entirety here.

~~~


The most simple spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all our loneliness comes to the surface.

We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique.

~~~

Silence, I think, is hard.  and terrifying, and sometimes so necessary.  I usually avoid it until it is forced, and then I cringe as it comes, and am usually thankful for it as I emerge from it.  Odd how that works, isn't it?

Saturday Links

Just a few quick reads today:

Hope wrote about praying for compassion, and about silence and secrets, among other things.  Her words hit home this morning.

Seth Godin wrote about choosing your critics.  Another good piece of advice.

Pursuing Quiet

My headspace has been way too loud and cluttered of late.

I've been bogged in stuff that I can't figure out, thrashing around, trying to find freedom in the midst of some gross stuff.

Late last night I decided that I needed my interior space to quiet down a little.

So today I'm doggedly pursuing quiet.

I'm being rather ruthless in what I will take in. What thought patterns I'm letting run their course. What I'm reading and listening to.

And I'm cleaning.

I'm not entirely sure if this is a needed thing, or just an elaborate method of avoiding that is working on a temporary basis.

But for now, I'm more peaceful.

And I decided that if I really do want to pursue freedom right now, it might be helpful to stop thrashing against the things that bind long enough for someone (Jesus I hope) to come and unbind them. It seems that it would be easier for unbinding to occur if I am still enough to make it a less difficult task.

Thursday. 9:43 a.m.

9:43 a.m.

I’m sitting at my desk, sipping tea.
Feeling a bit muddled again today.
Discombobulated.
Tired.

I’m making lists.
Things to do during the work day.
Things to do tonight, and on into the weekend.
Planning in my head.
Seeing how my bedroom will look once I’ve assembled my bed
Hung artwork
And finished unpacking.

The skies are grey again.
Cloudy and heavy.
It’s funny how often the skies
Seem to reflect my state of mind.

Passion tea
And chocolate kisses
With almonds inside.
All little ways that I pray.
The unspoken prayers
Of my heart.

A black cross
Four inches high is
Propped on my desk
Reminding me with
Bold white script
That I must
Trust.

Quiet
Tired
Discombobulated
Unspoken prayers
Spoken into the silence

It’s morning
A new day
And I am
Listening and waiting

A Wrestling Silence

A wrestling sort of silence has descended again, and I find myself with few words and the growing longing for the tears to come.

I wrote a dear friend this morning and told her that I was wishing we lived nearer to each other, that I simply wanted to rest my head in her lap and sob… to cry out all of the fear and pain and anger and just rest in her arms, being loved by her and by Jesus.

I’m still struck deeply by the words of others. By the things I’m reading. By books and emails and blog posts and news stories. Will you forgive me if I speak less and let them speak more on my blog for a while?

I need to take some time to be a bit quieter, to restlessly, painfully, let this silence exist inside me for a bit. To strain to hear the voice of Jesus, and to drown out all other voices that accuse and condemn.

The Deeper things...

There are things floating around me lately that defy words...

Lyrics from an as yet unrecorded song by Jacob and Lily that I heard at a couple of their shows a few months back... "...I heard that if I sold it all and bought a field I'd find myself a treasure..."

Lyrics from Jason Upton's song "You Decide What's Beautiful": "...You live in the tension, live in the tension, live in the tension of creation... you decide what's beautiful, you decide what's glorious... you're funny like that, you will not be controlled... way beyond men, way beyond our ideas... you live in the tension... you come to the broken, you live with the broken..."

Thoughts from an invitation I received this week, and from posts on Kirk's blog this last week or two...

A growing sense of expectation, coupled with a growing desire to spend time in quiet waiting.

A growing need to engage in the world - to engage in issues of justice, to care for the environment, to love on those in the "gutters" of the world.

A desire to make pilgrimage. To walk and pray and listen at various places around the globe.

A need to spend time with those people who make me most myself, most free to walk in the things of depth that God has placed in me.

A need to be in the mountains. I have tentative plans for two separate weekends over the course of this month. One on my own, staying with some friends, time for retreating, hiking, reading, and refocusing. One as a part of a gathering of people who pray.

A fascination with engagement with culture and politics, but from a place of separation. Engagement and separation...hmmm.... (see this post and particularly the article it links to, from earlier this week.)

I find myself very glad for a week away from the concerns of the office, the politics, the tension. A week to allow myself to once again rest and breathe. To spend time with family, and time at a conference for leadership development. To celebrate my birthday, and the birthdays of some others. To think and pray, and wait and wonder... That's where I'm at on this Friday morning.

The Mostly Dark

I’m sitting here in the mostly dark, and the light from my laptop screen is reflecting off my glasses, catching on every speck of dust or smudge, and highlighting the fact that they need to be wiped clean. My chair is just below my window, and it’s open, letting in the cool late evening air, and the ambient noise from nearby streets. I’m at peace.

My life feels like that right now too… mostly dark, but at peace. No real illumination. Lots of places where I am paused, waiting for what comes next. Where I have taken every step that has thus far presented itself, and now I wait, in the mostly dark – just enough light to know that things beautiful and freeing are coming, but not enough light to yet claim them.

Maybe the mostly dark is what it’s all about anyway… just enough light to move from one step to the next. I’m thinking of a Bruce Cockburn lyric “…another step deeper into darkness/closer to the light…”

I’m thinking too about all the various scripture passages…

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path…”

“You will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way. Walk in it.”

“The Lord turns my darkness into light…”

“before I go…to the land of deepest night, of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness…”

“He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings deep shadows into the light.”

“When I looked for light, then came darkness.”

“He redeemed my soul from going down to the pit and I will live to enjoy the light.”

“You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning. My god turns my darkness into light.”

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…”

Cockburn again:

Gone from mystery into mystery
Gone from daylight into night
Another step deeper into darkness
Closer to the light

Shut down

I feel somewhat shut down emotionally right now, and at the same time intensely aware. Does that make any sense at all?

The emotional stuff that I don't quite know how to handle is taking it's usual toll on my body. The muscles along my spine have tightened into painful knots, and my neck is perpetually stiff and sore. Add a bad bout of spring allergies to the mix and you've got all the makings of a good week.

I need to find some people to talk some of this out with sometime soon... The church stuff, the family stuff again. Trouble is that at the moment almost all of the people I would immediately pinpoint as people who could listen actively - that is, help me hear the parts of God and myself that I really need to hear in the midst of all of this - all of those people are on other continents or in other cities just presently! So I'll either be having some longish phone conversations in the coming days, writing epic length emails, or finding some new friends!

I came across a piece of writing I did on Christmas Eve last year this morning. I posted it on my blog then, and it rings so very true now. The time of transition has arrived, and like any great transition, I have absolutely no idea how it's going to play out.

I really am okay. I have this trust in Jesus right now that shocks me. I have this understanding of the deep level of healing he has brought in the past, and the hope that it too will come again soon.

Doing lots of praying these days. Lots of talking, and lots of listening too. Lots of waiting. (I'm not very good at waiting.) But I trust, and while that surprises me every time I pause and think about it, I think that it's a very good thing.