I am about to go on a retreat which will be almost entirely silent, just for a few days. I am feeling mostly excited, though I do detect a hint of wariness! But really I am longing for this silence at some fundamental level.
Trefoil with book
It strikes me that choosing to be silent might be one of the most powerful choices we could make in a world with so much multi-channel communication going on constantly? And that this is very different from feeling silenced or indeed from actually being silenced.
There is something in this about offering my attention just to God and to the natural world and also to my own self more deeply than I normally manage to do. And also something about receiving the loving attention of God and fellow creatures in the natural world, too. 🙏
This is the title of my all time favourite documentary film, which I saw the first time it screened in the UK in 2016 in between my daily radiotherapy appointments for cancer treatment. The film blew my mind. And resonated in such a gentle, inspiring and positive way. It drew my attention with its beauty (it is wonderfully shot), and the quiet joy of its soundtrack. It is an exercise in contemplation just watching it. An act of rebellion against the drivenness and thoughtless, damaging noise of our time.
I watched it at the Sheffield Doc Fest, the international film festival for documentary makers, and the q&a following with Patrick Shen the film maker was also an inspiration. I knew about Sheffield Doc Fest but had rarely managed to prioritise going to see many films. Watching this during my cancer journey helped me to begin to re-evaluate a lot of things.
For one thing, if a film could inspire me and resonate with me so much that it held the potential to alter my way of being, I resolved never to let work or life stop me from drinking in the films that arrive each year in the very city I live in. Sheffield Doc Fest has become a place I prioritise being at.
And for another, as I have watched this film time after time, it reminds me to continue my odyssey of seeking silence on my own and with others. I took the DVD with me on my trip around the world in 2019, which inspired me to begin writing this blog (it started as my travel blog), and I watched it with many of the people who hosted me. It provoked some incredible conversations between us. Real pearls.
Silence is something I run towards with a glad heart the more I practise it. I visited my parents recently, and at one point Mum came back having been out, and entered the room where I was simply being silent. She commented with questioning wonder on how silent the whole house was. I think she instinctively recognised that something important and deep, something I would describe as “holy” or “sacred”, even, was going on.
I have come to love the film so much I decided recently to see what Patrick Shen was up to, and found his Patreon. I read a bit of it and instantly knew this would help me stay my course. It seems the making of the film has also inspired a change of direction for him, too. I really admire the different creative approach he is taking as a result. To see, hear and read more click below:
I really hope and pray that these different ways of being we are finding across the world help us to evolve a more gentle way with ourselves, with each other and with our planet. A way that is content with enough, a way that embodies the kindness and quiet joy of silence. A way that deepens our connection with the natural world all around us. This is the way of healing, I think.
I am in a season of exploring a particular kind of silence. It’s a season in a life that appears to be emerging as one longing to be steeped in silence. Perhaps indefinitely.
This short, beautiful film is not silent, but honours the silence that falls at the end of life. The film maker Terence Davies wrote and read this poem, enabling the making of the film (produced by James Dowling and with an award winning score by Florencia Di Concilio), just before he died recently. I think he wrote it in memory of his sister, but it seems a beautiful tribute to him as well.
Passing Time
This is reminding me that, while I follow my odyssey of living silence, true silence will only fall with death. When my friend Jim died suddenly some years ago, I found the reality of his silence – its total finality – one of the hardest things. Jim was a quiet and unassuming man, but also a very gifted bass player. When he died, all the bass lines just disappeared. Our little band never sounded the same again.
la perle 