First Sunday - 3 May 2009
 
There is a scene in Philip Gröning’s wonderful documentary “Into Great Silence” where the camera is trained on one of the Carthusian monks at prayer. He’s praying….praying….still praying….and….still praying.
 
I understood immediately what the filmmaker was doing with this insanely long shot of a man sitting without moving. He was helping us understand how slow-moving the monks are and how we busy people have lost the ability to slow down and meditate and think. I felt sorry for those people who wouldn’t understand this and give in to their weak and wandering American attention spans.
 
So I watched the monk. And kept watching. And then I started getting bored. My eyes started drifting around the room, so I gave myself a little pep talk. “Hold it together now, boy. That’s exactly what the filmmaker is trying to show you. You can’t hold still long enough to watch a scene where no one is moving.”

So I forced my attention back to the screen. The monk was praying….praying….and…still praying. I held still as long as I could. I fidgeted and fretted. Then I fell apart. “C’mon, already! I got the message. I suck and am completely lost in my shallow culture. I can't sit still for more than 15 minutes without being entertained. There's no reason to rub my face in it! Get this thing moving. I want to see the monks eating dinner, ringing bells, and doing other monk things.”

But the monk still prayed. Praying, praying…still praying. Finally he moved. I flopped back in my chair. “It’s about time!”

But wait, he was only reaching over to feel his stove pipe to see if the fire had gone out. Now he’s praying…praying……still…praying.

I think I shall give a title to every Sunday I’m on Sabbatical. There are 13 Sundays in all. I don’t know if I will go to church on each of these. But my plan is to engage in some kind of meaningful worship every Sunday. On May 3rd I joined the Friends Meeting in San Antonio. The Quakers. I shall call the first Sunday of my sabbatical, “Into Great Silence.”

Our two younger daughters wanted to go to Covenant. They aren’t on sabbatical, so a family from our church took them. Jeanene and Reiley and I drove to a local Quaker meeting house. It was a beautiful place, nestled into a neighborhood. Simple buildings and lovely. The meeting house was perfect. One entire wall is a window with a view of trees. There are no decorations on the walls. Nothing but wooden floors, pews, a few chairs, and the silence which does dominate the room.

I knew of the Quaker practice of gathering in silence, of course, but this was my first experience of it.

We arrived a few minutes early. A friendly woman greeted us and made sure we understood that this was not going to be like a worship service in more traditional American churches. I’m sure they have learned to prepare visitors for this counter-cultural experience.

We walked into the room. There were two or three people there already. No one moved or made any acknowledgment of us. We found seats and settled ourselves. I looked around the room, appreciating the simple, Shaker-like beauty of what was in the room and what was conspicuously not in the room. After a few moments I closed my eyes and started listening. Listening is my favorite spiritual exercise these days. If you forsake your vision, let go of it altogether, you hear so much. You can’t believe how much you can hear. So I often listen and then try to be open to what the Spirit of God might say to me in the listening.

People came into the room. People are heavy. We are big, hulking chunks of matter draped in heavy clothes and wearing clunky shoes. The floor creaks and groans with the step of pilgrims finding a place to sit. There was a nice rhythm to it. We are being quiet together, we in this room. And now another pilgrim is joining us. We all listen to the sound of her body as it shuffles across the floor and settles into a pew. We hear every creak and groan. And then more silence.

I found that sitting was hard. I shifted positions several times. You have to lose a lot of your shame when you sit in silence with people. Because every biological function will be heard. If a stomach growls, the whole community hears it. If one person coughs or sneezes, the explosion of sound is deafening in the silence of the room. If your shoe scrapes across the floor, everyone knows.

These sounds are not disturbing to the time of worship. Not at all. They are the delightful sounds of humans trying to be quiet. And we cannot. Perfect silence is not possible for us. So even the sounds of people trying to be quiet are a part of the lesson.

After a time my head felt heavy. The silence itself seemed to be throbbing. And I began to lose my awareness of the distance between myself and the others in the room. If I opened my eyes I was sure I would find everyone in the room sitting right in front of me, within arms length. Maybe that’s because you generally only hear the body and breathing noises of people who are right beside you. I felt the presence of the others in the room. It was heavy and right in my face. And yet, when I opened my eyes, everyone was in their places. It was a little surprising. I couldn't shake the feeling that the Quakers were right up in my face when my eyes were closed and then teleported away in the instant I opened them.

About halfway through the hour a woman stood to speak. People did not turn to look at her. There was no need. There was no need to indicate with eyes or heads that we were listening. Of course we were listening. When someone talks after 30 minutes of silence, everyone listens. She talked about a writing project she was involved in and said something about medieval spirituality. I didn’t understand it all, but it didn't matter. I liked hearing someone talk. And I felt good about trusting that she knew what she was talking about, and it certainly meant a lot to her. It was nice to feel the meaning of her words and appreciate them without having to own them for myself.

She sat down and no one else spoke until the hour was up. One of the Friends had the job of watching the clock. He stood and shook someone’s hand. At that signal the meeting broke up. We were invited to have lunch with the Friends, but we wanted to go out to lunch ourselves and talk about the experience.

Some reflections:

1. I like listening and silence. And having spent my life in church where the verbal and written transmission of doctrines plays such a huge role, I felt good having some silence. I think I’m pretty familiar with the basic theology of Christianity. I feel familiar with our scriptures and our words and our theology. I could sit in silence for the next year, I think, and not miss the words at all.

2. I am a word man. 12 more Sundays and not only will I be back in a church that majors on words and sounds - I will be the chief sound-maker among them. I’m sure I’ll be fine, but right now I don’t want to say anything. Right now I’m happy for others to talk. Or not to talk.

Next Sunday I’m going to Journey in Austin. Then I might go back to the Quakers. I don’t know. I haven’t planned that far ahead.

Beautiful place for silence

The meeting room