Stillness and Silence
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Excerpt from After Amen: 50 Days of Poetry and Prayer by Tyler Staton
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The Sound of Renewal
Quiet is scary for the saint acquainted with taking the bull by the horns.
For the one eager to reach and grab God’s purposes,
susceptible to pace a step ahead of Jesus,
the quiet is a place to be avoided.
Quiet is a reprimand for the overexcited, talkative child.
Solitude introduced to most as a punishment first, “A place only gone to when forced, remained in for only as long as sentenced,
The quiet is a place to grow out of.
Quiet is the night when all the day’s potential has expired,
Nature’s rest that turns the light out on the rest of us, regardless of what’s left unfinished,
nothing to do but restfully or restlessly await the sun’s return.
The quiet is a darkness we await or endure.
Quiet is a wilderness we either choose or are thrust into.
Quiet was the wilderness Yahweh shoved Zechariah into when he scoffed at Gabriel’s declaration.
Nine months of wordless waiting, a priest without a word to “preach,
preparing the incumbent father to answer his life’s defining question.
Zechariah broke the silence in response to, “What is his name?”
Quiet was the wilderness Elizabeth freely chose,
Running to the very quiet her husband feared,
Five months of sweet solitude, preparing her to hospitably recognize her cousin as the mother of her Lord,
Recognizing the name before whom every knee will bow before anyone else.
Quiet was the wilderness in which the child she bore baptized. “The setting John invited all to choose, preparing them to recognize God in their midst.
The chosen solitude where the listening can still hear:
The voice of one calling in the wilderness that makes straight paths for the Lord.
Quiet, still, slow: the pace of the spirit, the way of the soul, the speed of love.
Quiet is the place I’m afraid to go because it demands complete release of control apart from guaranteed reward.
Quiet is the place I must go to release white-knuckled grip on the bull’s horns, slow my pace to the Rabbi’s speed. Quiet is the place he grabs hold of me, gets a step ahead of me, shows me where to go.
Quiet is . . .
“Prayer
Abba Father who knows and sees, I come not to speak but to listen, quieting my mind, stilling my body. As I sit in your loving gaze, remind me who I am most truly and who I am eternally—son or daughter, heir to the King who came to serve. Send me to live in this world in that identity, the only one you know me by and the only one I get to keep. As I live in this contested place as my true self, may I recover the true self in the others I companion along the way. Amen.”
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Lord, Please Quiet My Mind by Phil Wickham
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Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird
Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit by Henri Nouwen
Invitation to Solitude and Silence by Ruth Haley Barton
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“ O God, gather me now to be with you as you are with me. Soothe my tiredness; quiet my fretfulness; curb my aimlessness; relieve my compulsiveness; let me be easy for a moment…O Lord, release me from the fears and guilts which grip me so tightly; from the expectations and opinions which I so tightly grip, that I may be open to receiving what you give, to risking something genuinely new, to learning something refreshingly different. O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me. Amen.”
~Ted Loder,“Gather Me To Be With You”
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Colossians: 3:3
Acts: 17:28
John 14:20
John 15:4-5
All of Me
By Wendy Gerdes
Curled up in my usual big white chair where I spend the first part of most mornings, I felt restless. How had I come to this place where I dutifully spent a fair amount of time, but still felt so disjointed and scattered? My journal, a mess of halted thoughts, half written verses and restless writings, all revealed the internal unease that was making its way into my external world.
The framework of silence and solitude continued unhindered, yet I could not quite enter in. I was coming, but leaving my heart at the door. I was sitting with my body, but my heart was ready to bolt. My phone sat next to me inviting me away while my body sat. The time spent did not change but the silence and solitude I previously experienced in this sacred inviting chair became more and more elusive.
I felt a quiet resistance to entering in. There were some newly vulnerable places and I had become a bit unsure of what I would find. When God is doing deeper work sometimes there are things in me I do not want to see and places he wants to go I do not want him messing with.
Some things had recently happened I did not understand and I had run a bit short on trust in him. I knew I could trust him in the past, but could I trust him here with ‘this?’ My phone in my quiet space became an alluring distraction and my deep love of reading was a ready companion to keep me from the silence I so desperately needed. I felt his gentle voice inviting me to enter in; to trust him enough to be silent and to believe where he would take me would lead to life.
God wants to do deep work in us because he loves us and knows all of the places in us that desperately need him. He wants to tend to our wounds, eradicate all that is harming us and bring us closer to him. He wants to be intimate with us. We will never find him to be less loving or trustworthy than we hope, but sometimes we have to travel through uncharted territory and new places to know that is true. He is always working to move us what is true and sometimes in unknown seasons, we find we have been clinging to what is not. In our stillness, we learn to just be with him. His presence changes us.
Silence and solitude require all of us. It requires not just discipline of the body, time and space but also the internal letting go. When our mind becomes quiet we begin to see God more clearly. We also see our belovedness and through this we learn to love others more. Silence and stillness allow us to open ourselves up to the God who is already near. It is an act of turning our attention towards him. We live our lives centered in God’s love and hidden in Christ - silence and solitude help us remember what has been true all along. We are the beloved of God.
