the sound of silence

Earlier this week, I participated in the Women's (Clergy) Spiritual Formation Retreat sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. The retreat was held at Ignatius House in Sandy Springs, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. Ignatius House is owned and operated by the Jesuit Fathers and Brothers of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus and is named after Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order. 

The retreat began at noon on Monday and ended at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday. Of the 49 hours that we spent together, 25 were devoted to silence. Five times we observed hour-long periods of silence for reflection and sabbath. Each evening we observed the monastic tradition of the Great Silence, which began after our evening worship and was broken by the sound of a bell when we gathered for morning prayer.

In preparation for the retreat, we were encouraged to read Henri Nouwen's The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry. In this book, Nouwen focused on three of the spiritual disciplines practiced by the Desert Fathers and Mothers who lived in the Egyptian desert during the fourth and fifth centuries: solitude, silence, and prayer. Nouwen observed, "In our chatty world, in which the word has lost its power to communicate, silence helps us to keep our mind and heart anchored in the future world and allows us to speak from there a creative and recreative word to the present world. Thus silence can also give us concrete guidance in the practice of our ministry."

I had not realized how deeply I craved silence until I was afforded this opportunity to practice it for an extended period. As a writer and teacher, I was challenged by Nouwen's assertion that "silence gives strength and fruitfulness to the word." If I want my words to be fruitful - whether written or spoken - I must regularly retreat into God's silence.