A Season in Silence.

A Dispatch from the Hermitage.

St. Audrey’s Cottage aka The Hermitage.

Silence is the only phenomenon today that is “useless”. It does not fit into the world of profit and utility; it simply is. It seems to have no other purpose; it cannot be exploited.

—Max Picard. The World of Silence.

Everyone knows the usefulness of the useful, but no one knows the usefulness of the useless.

—Zhuangzi.

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It turns out it isn’t easy to write about silence. What is so blindingly obvious and unmistakable while you are immersed in it, becomes quite elusive when you seek to put it into words¹. I have been here at the monastery for three months. Never before have I lived almost continually in such deep silence. This is, on the other hand, a rather short period. I can hardly rate myself even a beginner in the way of silence after only three months. Nonetheless, it is clear that deep silence changes you. In many ways—all of which are also very difficult to describe—it has already begun to make me into a different person. All those decades of failed, and often disturbingly zealous, “self-improvement” efforts and all it took was to stand there in the silence and assent to it. All I had to do is let it do its work in me. This is strange.

That said, I wanted to let you all know that my situation here at the monastery has changed. At the Abbot’s suggestion, I am being allowed to live in the otherwise vacant St. Audrey’s Cottage for a trial period of three months. I have been praying for an opportunity like this for years, maybe decades even. I was beginning to think I would never get the chance to live in silence, solitude, and simplicity (and hopefully while living in a supportive community). But here it is, it’s happening. Now I will get the opportunity—God willing—to do a kind of test run for the Arsenios Option. I have already fled the world, at least temporarily. Now I will see what it is like to live in a more radical silence. It is one thing to merely talk about it, and quite another to live it. I am going to try to live it².

I have one at least hope and a few intentions for this time in silence. I hope to deepen my silent prayer practice. This is first and foremost. If nothing else, I will consider this time more than well spent if I can simply live in silence and stillness. My intention, on the other hand, is to use some of the extra time I have been granted to focus more on this substack. It remains to be seen, of course, but I hope to be able to put out more regular posts.

I am also planning on using the podcast option here on substack in the upcoming weeks. But worry not! I promise I will keep it short—in the 5-10 minute range, for the most part. There are enough distractions out there already. Who needs another 3-hour podcast? Particularly if it were three hours of me talking about silence!³ I know I don’t need that. My hope is that of having a more informal, even somewhat spontaneous way of deepening the conversation here. Because I think we all must gain clarity on how to walk in the darkness of our broken, postmodern, and technological world. While I intend to keep using the written substack posts for more extended explorations, the podcast will be more for short meditations from relevant books and experiences. Maybe an interview now and again. Who knows?

Rest assured, however, that I have no desire of ruining my time in silence by trying to be merely useful and productive. If all goes well—and this by God’s grace—I will become ever more useless by the day⁴. This is what the silence has already begun in me. I no longer want to fit into the world of profit and utility—that instead, be as the silence is, and that one simply is. Maybe we can find out? Is that even possible? Or desirable?

I guess I have one more hope for this time. For starters, yes, I would like to finish the essay about silence I am working on for nearly a month now. That would be good. But more important than writing about silence, I would like to learn to live in silence and from it. I would like to learn to speak and write from it as well. And I have barely even begun to learn its language.

All that, of course, remains to be seen. But any attempts to fathom its depths would be time well spent for me and for any and all of us. I have been "productive" enough already in this life⁵. I think we all could do well to learn more about the usefulness of useless silence. Or rather unlearn and drop all the noise I have been carrying around within myself. We live in a machine civilization long dedicated to producing noise and the obliteration of silence. It is doing—we are doing—a bang-up job of it, sad to say. And it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

I can think of no better way to take a better path than to dwell in stillness and be silent, having fled the world of noise and distraction. There is no way to silence, silence is the way.⁶

In this I find hope.

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The Rose is without an explanation; She blooms, because She blooms.

—Angelus Silesius. From The Cherubinic Wanderer.

1. At least for me.

2. And then talk about it. There will be talk, I am sorry to say.

3. I don’t think I could do that even if I wanted to do that. I don’t want to do that.

4. I know you all have faith in me.

5. And, okay, granted, in the big picture, I have never been all that productive, to begin with. Still, the point is a valid one!! Though perhaps not in my case. For most of you, though, it is.

6. A paraphrase of the quote, "There Is No Way to Peace, Peace Is the Way" by A.J. Muste