The Attitude of Silence

If you have ever visited a monastery, it is likely that one of the first things you notice about it is that it is usually completely silent. From the way people greet each other to the way people walk, there is a quiet reverence within the walls of the monastic buildings and around the grounds of the monastery as well.

For some, this level of environmental quiet brings a peaceful interior rest, while for others, it is more than a little unsettling. This level of silence can quiet our fears and refresh our souls, but it can also stir up a small amount of terror or make our thoughts nearly deafening within us.

At this point in your formation, you ought to have become acquainted, and to some level, comfortable with environmental silence. This should apply to both to speaking and technological devices; each of us should have at least one period of total environmental silence each day.

But what about the noises we can’t control? The birds will continue to chirp, household appliances buzz off and on and for those of you who live in metropolitan areas, you have the noise of passing cars, busy people and a long list of other possible noises.

This is where our attitudes come into the spotlight. Having an “attitude of silence” isn’t just about being quiet despite a noisy environment. In order to effectively maintain your interior silence in the midst of environmental noise, you must learn to keep the noise from being an annoyance.

When we are annoyed it is easy to slip into a state of anger, which can easily disrupt our decorum. Being annoyed also makes it easy to be confrontational, argumentative, bitter and uncharitable toward others. So, how do we attain the kind of interior silence that lets us be at peace despite noise?

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. It can probably be said for certain that none of us have achieved the level of silence needed to be perfectly at peace in the midst of noise. It can also be said that developing and attitude of interior quietness will go a long way toward ensuring decorum is kept and a joyful outlook is within our reach.

Many years ago, I found myself on retreat at a hermitage in the middle of the Texas desert. The

superior of that community, during one of our spiritual direction chats, articulated to me that in order for her to truly reach a contemplative state, that there needed to be perfect environmental silence around her.

At the time, I agreed with her. Of course silence on an environmental level was necessary for contemplation. How could it happen any other way? I was still a very green 26 years old at the time, and had yet to truly experience the inner stillness of which she spoke.

She further articulated to me that when there was not perfect silence around her, that it wore on her nerves, sometimes to the point of bringing her to tears. Friends, this holy woman is not the only person to tell me this story, and I have been guilty of acting it out myself from time to time.

Now that I am older, I look back on this shared moment between myself and the good Superior of that hermitage, and I think to myself, “well, that’s just silly.”

You see the enclosure in which I currently find myself is quite remote, and even out here there is rarely perfect environmental silence. Birds chirp, dogs bark, sheep bleat, the wind blows and the house creaks and settles. Even though I do enjoy a high level of environmental silence, it is far from perfect.

It has since occurred to me that, where contemplative prayer, personal silence and monastic discipline are concerned, it is the personal intention to be quiet that matters more than environmental silence. I like to call this “the attitude of silence”, because it is the intention of the person to be silent, rather than the situation that they find themselves in that provokes silence within them.

So, let the birds sing, the house creak and the wind blow. These things are beyond our control anyway, so there is little use in getting upset because they infringe on your perfect silence. Harbor the attitude of silence and I guarantee that you will find yourself just as still and satisfied as those who do enjoy perfect environmental silence.