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. 🙏
A little chant by Philip Roderick that I’ve been singing alone and with others for a number of years. It made its way back to me via a couple of new friends and acquaintances recently. I am so glad it has been doing the rounds. Kick off your shoes, root yourself where you are and have a sing. Enjoy… 🌱
During lent I am re-reading the book of this 👆🏼 title by Walter Brueggemann with a friend. So far many home truths have reasserted themselves for me, in the nick of time. One of them is that guarding time off for rest and recreation is increasingly difficult, because it’s an act of resistance in a culture where the prevailing value is about increase of production and consumption. No wonder that retaining this boundary requires a lot of effort which feels, ironically, like work. It is work. But perhaps some of the most important work we can do.
The most useful work we can do may be to break the cycle of anxious production and worry that there won’t be enough, simply by actually resting. I am finding that it’s only after rest that I can see the wood for the trees, and begin making better decisions about how I spend my time.
“There are limits to how much food Pharoah [and we] can store and consume and administer. The limit is set by the weekly work pause that breaks the production cycle. And those who participate in it break the anxiety cycle. They are invited to awareness that life does not consist in frantic production and consumption that reduces everyone else to threat and competitor. And the work stoppage permits a waning of anxiety, so energy is redeployed to the neighbourhood. The odd insistence of the God of Sinai is to counter anxious productivity with committed neighbourliness. The latter practice does not produce so much; but it creates an environment of security and respect and dignity that redefines the human project.” (Brueggemann Sabbath as Resistance Louisville, KT: John Knox Press, 2014 p.27-28)
All of this is resonating a lot for me. I am seeking to re-learn from a past mistress of proper rest how to really REST!
Interrupting before my second post about Mozart just to say I’ve been writing advent notes with a friend this year. In our final post, we included a reference to O Magnum Mysterium by Morten Lauridsen. It’s a beautiful meditative piece, which I offer as a Christmassy blessing here. Click the link below to hear it…
Lyrics:
O magnum mysterium Et admirabile sacramentum Ut animalia viderent Dominum natum Jacentem in praesepio! Beata Virgo, cujus viscera Meruerunt portare Dominum Christum Alleluia!
Translation:
O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger! Blessed is the virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord, Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
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.
I love spending time with artists and creative people of all sorts. I find their work so inspiring. And mostly it’s there to be lived or experienced, which is an extraordinary gift. Experiencing art of any sort always seems to inspire creativity in me, which is often deeply satisfying in a way I can’t quite explain.
This week I had the delight of seeing Matthew Bourne’s Romeo & Juliet, which sparked a lot of wondering and ideas, as well as reminding me of the striking beauty of light and shadow.
Then I’ve been reading about rest and sabbath as I land finally on a very long-awaited day off today. In this moment of stillness, invited by the slowing of a rest day, my eye caught the pattern of shadows on the wall as the trees were being blown about. I decided to film them, suddenly realising in so doing that in our urban location some massive and possibly awful thing is happening (or maybe many awful things), judging by the number of sirens in the background. I notice these, offer my stillness as some kind of prayer, and return to relishing the moment; the wind, the autumn leaves, the unseasonal warmth which invites my sitting outside.
Watching this back reminds me of Walter Brueggeman’s concept of “sabbath as resistance”. The idea that to be still and rest is a form of protest against the drivenness of our culture.
I receive Patrick Shen’s Patreon as I was so struck by his film In Pursuit of Silence (2015) when I saw it at the Sheffield Doc Fest some years ago. I have since rewatched it and shared it with many others.
I recently looked him up and discovered he is trying to find a different way of making his art that is less driven by the capitalist machinery that I think is threatening to suffocate and stifle creativity in all of us now. So I decided to support him with a tiny but regular gift on Patreon. Already this is proving life giving to me, looking at his short film sketches and following links to the things inspiring his creativity. There is a lot of resonance for me. And an invitation to deepen my contemplative practice myself. And to continue exploring my own creativity.
I notice that all these wonderful life giving things occur to me in moments of rest and recreation. Much though I love my work (and recognise the huge privilege of loving what you do), I am reminded that rest and recreation are what restores me and gives me what I need for life. Without this kind of inspiration, the quality of my work would suffer as much as I would. But even if the quality of my work didn’t suffer, I want the fact that I would and those around me would to be enough to remind me to slow, rest, recreate. (Note to self.)
In the middle of much busy-ness, I am noticing the loss of deep stillness and silence lately, and an invitation to re-engage with it.
Hence yesterday during a glorious morning, when unsettled sleep had woken me too early, I went out. I lay on my back in the garden and saw this:
What glorious blue!
I felt queasy, due to sleep deprivation and not drinking enough water the previous day. But this was glorious. As I lay there for about half an hour, I saw at least 5 different species of birds fly past twittering their spring songs.
I am hoping to drop into this deeper stillness more in the coming time. Even when there is a lot of hubbub and activity around me and lurking in the back of my mind. Perhaps if I practise it, I will be able to lay it aside again as the silence falls…? This is what my brain needs I think.
Well, so much for posting every day this month!! Scuppered when I’d barely begun. Various practicalities got in the way, as they do. Then I read something about being speechless. It was a comment about social media and a question to ask oneself; “Am I saying something because I think I have to say something or because I have something to say…?” (Paraphrasing Gideon Heugh in his little new book of advent reflections, Darkling.)
A friend shared a vision they had from God, which reminded me of this today. A lovely invitation to deep rest. I listened to the music below and reread the ancient poem below that and dwelt with that image of the weaned child. Wonderful.
This is my favourite recording of Spiegel im Spiegel (« Mirror in the Mirror ») by Arvo Pärt, performed with such brave vulnerability by Daniel Hope. Most violinists would add vibrato to make it sound professional. But he captures the simplicity and vulnerability of this music-prayer beautifully: https://youtu.be/QqmZxtrUVK8
Psalm 131
O LORD, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore.
la perle 