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Isaiah 30:15 NLT
‘This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it.’’
My week of silence and stillness ended as we broke our silence in a Eucharist together. We each brought something significant from our week to contribute to our shared worship. For me, it was a completed poem capturing my experience both as an introduction to the silence and a recovery of my writing of poetry.
After just a few days of maintaining, for the most part, the discipline of silence and stillness, I left Aylesford and travelled by train back home. I was completely unprepared for the intensity of noise I returned to. These were the simple sounds of everyday life that I’d been separated from for just five days. As I re-engaged with the world, the sounds assaulted every one of my senses. I was distressed and struggled to hold back my internalised criticism of everyone and everything that now bombarded me with sound.
Of course, I very quickly readjusted. Yet, it was not lost on me that I had experienced something very different throughout my retreat. I had become conscious of the sound of God within, of the natural sounds that filled the silence as I waited upon God.
Not only did such sounds overwhelm and anger me, they also drew my attention from the source of the silence, God – and how quickly I returned to pursue the many distractions that took hold of my mind. I took back the control room of my life, and while reading my retreat journal now fed off a past experience rather than built upon it for current, fresh engagement with the presence within the silence.
Fortunately, I was sufficiently aware to ensure I built personal daily retreats into my schedule – no mobile phone or tablet technology for 12-hour stretches. I planned three of these into my annual schedule as well as an annual four-day residential retreat. I was beginning to seek out the silence and the God who inhabited its heart.
QUESTION: Where can you go to find silence to pray and consider God?
PRAYER: Lord, may I know your voice as a sheep knows the voice of its shepherd.
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