Dear Jack, I am always so pleased when I see another offering of yours in my inbox. Reading your words and the eloquence of your readers’ comments too allows me to feel less alone in the spot I find myself in. It’s a strange one as a life long constant doer; mother, musician, and teacher and and and…but I have driven myself to the end of the road of worth defined through endless doing. So what now? I’ve been asking or I suppose, rather pleading…WHAT NOW? I haven’t found answers (I wanted to add “yet” but it seems I cannot) but I am somewhat relieved to read your words and know that my compulsion of figuring shit out isn’t all that uncommon.
It’s been quite the unraveling of which it only seemed natural at the end of the last string, I would find a God I didn’t give much thought to in my former life. Even now, as I acknowledge something was there through my ecstatic musical experiences and equally ecstatic addictions embraced by my industry, I am surprised that this…desire for silence and darkness is so strong.
I just want to share that your line “I got lost. I turned back. That is more than sufficient,” brought on a sensation of truth (capital T perhaps?) that only my body seems to be able to communicate these days. A part of me is sad to know it to be true and also heartened to know maybe it is enough. So thank you. And thanks to everyone here as well. It’s a lovely little community of wordsmiths that I enjoy immensely feeling a part of. All the best, Kenna
Thanks, Jack, for this beautiful reflection. Funnily, I never see the point of stopping for the silence and stillness, until I stop, and then it becomes clearer. I see how all the little words in my head, like lenses, amplify or distort bits of reality at high speed, often in the most selfish of ways. It is so strange, this contradiction of silence and words that accompanies us everywhere.
The Arsenios option, of fleeing distraction and ambition, and seeking stillness, is one that I find only in bits and pieces in my banal middle-class existence. The Machine is one thing; children, work, myriad worries about everything from finances to mini-crises, etc., are a whole other category of distraction (and often more immediate).
And yet it seems the Option is doable, in small ways, by slowing down, simplifying life, and by laying the words to rest a little, and allowing something else to rise. I’m not saying I’m very good at this, but the difference is striking. Sometimes confusing. How can life be so split, between the world of words and of doings, and the world of silence and stillness?
I don’t think it’s within human power to heal the split, though sometimes we experience glimmers of union. Still, one wonders, and tries.
"For all the things I have done in my lifetime though, most of it has done little more than firm up my existing prejudices and ideological priors."
That seems so true for me as well. Rather than "the comfort of letting go of the illusion that I can make things clear," it's more like trying to face the resulting terror/anxiety of letting go of the illusion that I can make things clear--accompanied by a great degree of sadness.
"And that by clarity I can make things right." And without that conviction (as a died-in-the wool politico) things really get scary!
Getting back to our will-to-power dynamic--is it really ever possible to transcend/overcome or modify that drive--When push comes to shove what makes you confident/hopeful that fleeing the world of distraction and ambition is not simply another power position? I can't presently shake the proposition that all of my reasoning ability seems to end up supporting some type of power position--even though I often make a great deal of effort to hide that apparent fact from myself.
Jack, again thanks for creating a platform that allows me to articulate some of my deepest concerns.
As someone who feels calls to the contemplative life and the tradition of 'via negativa,' I wonder if you struggle with finding it easier to read and reflect on scripture or theological works than concentrate on prayer and silence. I enjoy academic and spiritual works, and sometimes my lectio divina becomes more time for scholarship than a time to encounter the Divine. In part, that's because I rarely spend time in prayer without recognizing my sin and inadequacy... or how rarely I see anything, including myself and others clearly, let alone begin to move towards the Kingdom of God.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us. --Diana
I totally agree with your sentiment here Jack. Having just experienced my first Quaker meeting this weekend, the expectant silent waiting for guidance from the part of our beings that communicates without language and logic is key to navigating this life. We live most days in a cloud of our own thoughts and to be still and listen to that inner light is what makes most sense to me right now too. There was something quite powerful about sitting in silence with others who also share the desire and respect for this inner divine voice. I don't think I can quite put the experience into words right now but I will try perhaps with a poem soon. I don't think anything is fixed in life therefore nothing requires fixing. I'm of the belief that life is a forever moving process and God is also always in a state of flux, moving with life as we move with him; that's why we must always listen. I believe Alfred North Whitehead, captured this idea of God in his Process Philosophy however his writing is very difficult to understand. May be this is because the true nature of life is just too much for our language and human brains to comprehend! There is an academic called Matthew Segall who is presenting Whiteheads work in a more comprehensible way. Also I'm not sure if you've heard of the Cobb Institute who explore Process Theology? I'm being far too logic and thought driven now so I'll leave it there! Thanks again for sharing your experience.
Sep 15, 2022·edited Sep 15, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
Cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown :)
Some years ago, I was reading in some book by Morris Berman how spiritual problems are not solved - they are transcended.
In many Chan/Zen schools, one does not "find" the answer - after a long journey of searching, one realized one always had it. Huang Po's message is - we go on long journeys to find "it", but we always had it.
In Christian terms this is, the Kingdom of Heaven is inside you, and in Christian mysticism this idea is expressed as God is more intimate to me than I am to myself. Eckhardt speaks a lot about this.
Very much enjoyed this post - mist shrouded mountains are one of the best things one can experience.
Jack, this is so timely and wise. If it doesn't intrude into your quiet experience I hope you keep sharing this journey of yours here.
As my family and I begin to prepare for our flight to the hills we are immersed in a frenzy of activity and practical action as well as dizzying thoughts and doubts swirling. I have had much more inner quiet in many other past phases of my life. It is a paradoxical letting go of many things but requiring lots of management and organization to do so as we shift toward moving. I also was struck by the picture of you taking a path up the hill, coming to a dead end, and turning back. I accept the smallness and the seeming failure of so much I have worked on. I trust God.
“(T)he truth is not nearly as dangerous as is generally believed. For even if brought into the open it will not become common property; this is the primordial decree of fate. No one will see the truth who is not destined to see it, even though it appear naked on every street corner. Furthermore, as long as the world shall last, there will always be people, who either for their peace of mind, or from an unquiet conscience, will build up sublime lies for their neighbours. And these people have always been and always will be the masters of human thought”. ( Lev Shestov, 1929).
The lyricism of your most recent offering is truly warming, Jack. I can hear the eddies of the north shore of Walden Pond rolling all the way across the Atlantic. And yet, of late, I have come to wonder at the unquestioned efficacy with which ‘silence as a spiritual praxis’ has been invested in the kind of spaces in which people like us trade ideas and desires. Great contemporary advocates like Merton, his fellow Trappist Thomas Keating, and the Franciscan, Richard Rohr speak to a large audience; an audience that once included me. Such being the case, I hope that what follows will be read as the self-questioning of a self-confessed fellow traveller rather than anything like a critique.
I want to proceed under three headings. Taken in sum they represent narratives that are internally related in complicated ways. I have attempted to tease them apart for the sake of expositional clarity. But I feel a failure in the making, here. The heck with it. These are the headings: (1) Silence as a lingua franca for fearsome times; (2) Silence as the recognition of Kairos; (3) Silence as (un)prophecy.
There can be little doubt that those who are invested in expanding the boundaries of ‘post-modernism’ rarely scruple against using fear and extreme censure to prepare the ground before their advance. I do not know quite what is meant by ‘cancel culture’; I do not even know if it is a real thing. I do know that it has become a trope of the contemporary war of words. It would seem that, the coronation of ‘subjectivity’ as the paramount hermeneutical idea notwithstanding, ‘speaking ones own truth’ is a risky business. Spiritual - theological conversation appear to offer no safer ground than any other kind of narrative endeavour. Do we have, then, a kind of double-whammy: on the one hand, a felt need to create alliances in times of increasing marginalisation; and, on the other hand, a fear of the language our tradition has handed to us for the pursuance of such a purpose? How do we ‘do’ ecumenical or inter-faith work in times such as these? In times when ‘causing offence’ has been elevated to the status of a cardinal sin, does sitting in silence with our brothers and sisters in God help us to avoid the ‘offence’ that some of the articles of our faith might call forth? And if that is anything like the case, what does that say about our Faith?
There is another sense in which ‘silence’ might be imagined as a, ‘sign of the times’; as something like a Kairos moment. In your piece you suggest that our contemporary moment might be identified as presenting an excess of ‘information’ and a relative paucity of ‘insight’. At first blush this seems OK. And, should such be case, it is reasonable to conceive of ‘silence’ as the particular ascetic practice called forth by the moment. However, while I would hesitate to recommend Lev Shestov’s work without reservation, I can say that reading his essays has made me wary of placing too much weight on historical periodisations of this kind. For Shestov all eras are freighted with similar and similarly complex confusions. The roots, for this Jewish, Russian emigre, of the matter lay deep in the sub-soil out of which emerged the marriage of Athens and Jerusalem; or, Reason as constructed by Greek philosophy on the one hand and, on the other, the Creator God of Scripture, the God of Abraham. One might illustrate the difficulty by reference to the Middle Ages in Europe out of which the great, silent monastic Orders, the Carthusians, the Carmelites, the Camaldolese, and the Trappists. emerged. The point being that these great foundations of prayer and solitude existed in tandem with the ‘active’ orders, (the Dominican, the Franciscans, and the like), not to mention an extensive network of secular priests. In contemporary times we have witnessed the accelerating decline of all such institutional elements as these. I wonder if the dimensions of the praxis of ‘silence’ are robust enough to carry the burden?
In what Bob Dylan might have called a Simple Twist of Fate, your latest piece on silence landed in my in box on the day folk like me and my wife were thanking the Most High for the gift of St John Chrysostom (c307 -347) . You may know the great saint as the one time Archbishop of Constantipole. You may further know that roughly translated, ‘Chrysostom’ means ‘Golden-mouthed’. And, that John was given that soubriquet as a result of the unparalleled elegance of his preaching. Finally, it is worth noting that the glory of his preaching, pressed into the service of fighting corruption and heresy had him exiled by the Roman emperor, twice. And, served to shortened his life by quite some. So the day I receive the latest paean to ‘silence’ is the day we celebrate the raising to the High Alter of one of the greatest and most fearless preacher in Christian history. Sweet. Here, I want to say something that sounds too harsh to my ear. And I have been sat looking at this keyboard hoping for some kind of sweeter tone for a long time. And no joy. So, what if silence, rather than being, that which provides a lingua franca in troubled times; something that offers an alternative locus of faithful practice called forth by the historic moment; is something less straightforwardly benign? What if what we have be given is a Mount Horeb moment; what if if like Elijah we are called to witness the the ‘silence’ of God, for no other purpose than to prophesy without fear?
Dear Jack, I am always so pleased when I see another offering of yours in my inbox. Reading your words and the eloquence of your readers’ comments too allows me to feel less alone in the spot I find myself in. It’s a strange one as a life long constant doer; mother, musician, and teacher and and and…but I have driven myself to the end of the road of worth defined through endless doing. So what now? I’ve been asking or I suppose, rather pleading…WHAT NOW? I haven’t found answers (I wanted to add “yet” but it seems I cannot) but I am somewhat relieved to read your words and know that my compulsion of figuring shit out isn’t all that uncommon.
It’s been quite the unraveling of which it only seemed natural at the end of the last string, I would find a God I didn’t give much thought to in my former life. Even now, as I acknowledge something was there through my ecstatic musical experiences and equally ecstatic addictions embraced by my industry, I am surprised that this…desire for silence and darkness is so strong.
I just want to share that your line “I got lost. I turned back. That is more than sufficient,” brought on a sensation of truth (capital T perhaps?) that only my body seems to be able to communicate these days. A part of me is sad to know it to be true and also heartened to know maybe it is enough. So thank you. And thanks to everyone here as well. It’s a lovely little community of wordsmiths that I enjoy immensely feeling a part of. All the best, Kenna
Thanks, Jack, for this beautiful reflection. Funnily, I never see the point of stopping for the silence and stillness, until I stop, and then it becomes clearer. I see how all the little words in my head, like lenses, amplify or distort bits of reality at high speed, often in the most selfish of ways. It is so strange, this contradiction of silence and words that accompanies us everywhere.
The Arsenios option, of fleeing distraction and ambition, and seeking stillness, is one that I find only in bits and pieces in my banal middle-class existence. The Machine is one thing; children, work, myriad worries about everything from finances to mini-crises, etc., are a whole other category of distraction (and often more immediate).
And yet it seems the Option is doable, in small ways, by slowing down, simplifying life, and by laying the words to rest a little, and allowing something else to rise. I’m not saying I’m very good at this, but the difference is striking. Sometimes confusing. How can life be so split, between the world of words and of doings, and the world of silence and stillness?
I don’t think it’s within human power to heal the split, though sometimes we experience glimmers of union. Still, one wonders, and tries.
"For all the things I have done in my lifetime though, most of it has done little more than firm up my existing prejudices and ideological priors."
That seems so true for me as well. Rather than "the comfort of letting go of the illusion that I can make things clear," it's more like trying to face the resulting terror/anxiety of letting go of the illusion that I can make things clear--accompanied by a great degree of sadness.
"And that by clarity I can make things right." And without that conviction (as a died-in-the wool politico) things really get scary!
Getting back to our will-to-power dynamic--is it really ever possible to transcend/overcome or modify that drive--When push comes to shove what makes you confident/hopeful that fleeing the world of distraction and ambition is not simply another power position? I can't presently shake the proposition that all of my reasoning ability seems to end up supporting some type of power position--even though I often make a great deal of effort to hide that apparent fact from myself.
Jack, again thanks for creating a platform that allows me to articulate some of my deepest concerns.
As someone who feels calls to the contemplative life and the tradition of 'via negativa,' I wonder if you struggle with finding it easier to read and reflect on scripture or theological works than concentrate on prayer and silence. I enjoy academic and spiritual works, and sometimes my lectio divina becomes more time for scholarship than a time to encounter the Divine. In part, that's because I rarely spend time in prayer without recognizing my sin and inadequacy... or how rarely I see anything, including myself and others clearly, let alone begin to move towards the Kingdom of God.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us. --Diana
I totally agree with your sentiment here Jack. Having just experienced my first Quaker meeting this weekend, the expectant silent waiting for guidance from the part of our beings that communicates without language and logic is key to navigating this life. We live most days in a cloud of our own thoughts and to be still and listen to that inner light is what makes most sense to me right now too. There was something quite powerful about sitting in silence with others who also share the desire and respect for this inner divine voice. I don't think I can quite put the experience into words right now but I will try perhaps with a poem soon. I don't think anything is fixed in life therefore nothing requires fixing. I'm of the belief that life is a forever moving process and God is also always in a state of flux, moving with life as we move with him; that's why we must always listen. I believe Alfred North Whitehead, captured this idea of God in his Process Philosophy however his writing is very difficult to understand. May be this is because the true nature of life is just too much for our language and human brains to comprehend! There is an academic called Matthew Segall who is presenting Whiteheads work in a more comprehensible way. Also I'm not sure if you've heard of the Cobb Institute who explore Process Theology? I'm being far too logic and thought driven now so I'll leave it there! Thanks again for sharing your experience.
Cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown :)
Some years ago, I was reading in some book by Morris Berman how spiritual problems are not solved - they are transcended.
In many Chan/Zen schools, one does not "find" the answer - after a long journey of searching, one realized one always had it. Huang Po's message is - we go on long journeys to find "it", but we always had it.
In Christian terms this is, the Kingdom of Heaven is inside you, and in Christian mysticism this idea is expressed as God is more intimate to me than I am to myself. Eckhardt speaks a lot about this.
Very much enjoyed this post - mist shrouded mountains are one of the best things one can experience.
Jack, this is so timely and wise. If it doesn't intrude into your quiet experience I hope you keep sharing this journey of yours here.
As my family and I begin to prepare for our flight to the hills we are immersed in a frenzy of activity and practical action as well as dizzying thoughts and doubts swirling. I have had much more inner quiet in many other past phases of my life. It is a paradoxical letting go of many things but requiring lots of management and organization to do so as we shift toward moving. I also was struck by the picture of you taking a path up the hill, coming to a dead end, and turning back. I accept the smallness and the seeming failure of so much I have worked on. I trust God.
Clara
“(T)he truth is not nearly as dangerous as is generally believed. For even if brought into the open it will not become common property; this is the primordial decree of fate. No one will see the truth who is not destined to see it, even though it appear naked on every street corner. Furthermore, as long as the world shall last, there will always be people, who either for their peace of mind, or from an unquiet conscience, will build up sublime lies for their neighbours. And these people have always been and always will be the masters of human thought”. ( Lev Shestov, 1929).
The lyricism of your most recent offering is truly warming, Jack. I can hear the eddies of the north shore of Walden Pond rolling all the way across the Atlantic. And yet, of late, I have come to wonder at the unquestioned efficacy with which ‘silence as a spiritual praxis’ has been invested in the kind of spaces in which people like us trade ideas and desires. Great contemporary advocates like Merton, his fellow Trappist Thomas Keating, and the Franciscan, Richard Rohr speak to a large audience; an audience that once included me. Such being the case, I hope that what follows will be read as the self-questioning of a self-confessed fellow traveller rather than anything like a critique.
I want to proceed under three headings. Taken in sum they represent narratives that are internally related in complicated ways. I have attempted to tease them apart for the sake of expositional clarity. But I feel a failure in the making, here. The heck with it. These are the headings: (1) Silence as a lingua franca for fearsome times; (2) Silence as the recognition of Kairos; (3) Silence as (un)prophecy.
There can be little doubt that those who are invested in expanding the boundaries of ‘post-modernism’ rarely scruple against using fear and extreme censure to prepare the ground before their advance. I do not know quite what is meant by ‘cancel culture’; I do not even know if it is a real thing. I do know that it has become a trope of the contemporary war of words. It would seem that, the coronation of ‘subjectivity’ as the paramount hermeneutical idea notwithstanding, ‘speaking ones own truth’ is a risky business. Spiritual - theological conversation appear to offer no safer ground than any other kind of narrative endeavour. Do we have, then, a kind of double-whammy: on the one hand, a felt need to create alliances in times of increasing marginalisation; and, on the other hand, a fear of the language our tradition has handed to us for the pursuance of such a purpose? How do we ‘do’ ecumenical or inter-faith work in times such as these? In times when ‘causing offence’ has been elevated to the status of a cardinal sin, does sitting in silence with our brothers and sisters in God help us to avoid the ‘offence’ that some of the articles of our faith might call forth? And if that is anything like the case, what does that say about our Faith?
There is another sense in which ‘silence’ might be imagined as a, ‘sign of the times’; as something like a Kairos moment. In your piece you suggest that our contemporary moment might be identified as presenting an excess of ‘information’ and a relative paucity of ‘insight’. At first blush this seems OK. And, should such be case, it is reasonable to conceive of ‘silence’ as the particular ascetic practice called forth by the moment. However, while I would hesitate to recommend Lev Shestov’s work without reservation, I can say that reading his essays has made me wary of placing too much weight on historical periodisations of this kind. For Shestov all eras are freighted with similar and similarly complex confusions. The roots, for this Jewish, Russian emigre, of the matter lay deep in the sub-soil out of which emerged the marriage of Athens and Jerusalem; or, Reason as constructed by Greek philosophy on the one hand and, on the other, the Creator God of Scripture, the God of Abraham. One might illustrate the difficulty by reference to the Middle Ages in Europe out of which the great, silent monastic Orders, the Carthusians, the Carmelites, the Camaldolese, and the Trappists. emerged. The point being that these great foundations of prayer and solitude existed in tandem with the ‘active’ orders, (the Dominican, the Franciscans, and the like), not to mention an extensive network of secular priests. In contemporary times we have witnessed the accelerating decline of all such institutional elements as these. I wonder if the dimensions of the praxis of ‘silence’ are robust enough to carry the burden?
In what Bob Dylan might have called a Simple Twist of Fate, your latest piece on silence landed in my in box on the day folk like me and my wife were thanking the Most High for the gift of St John Chrysostom (c307 -347) . You may know the great saint as the one time Archbishop of Constantipole. You may further know that roughly translated, ‘Chrysostom’ means ‘Golden-mouthed’. And, that John was given that soubriquet as a result of the unparalleled elegance of his preaching. Finally, it is worth noting that the glory of his preaching, pressed into the service of fighting corruption and heresy had him exiled by the Roman emperor, twice. And, served to shortened his life by quite some. So the day I receive the latest paean to ‘silence’ is the day we celebrate the raising to the High Alter of one of the greatest and most fearless preacher in Christian history. Sweet. Here, I want to say something that sounds too harsh to my ear. And I have been sat looking at this keyboard hoping for some kind of sweeter tone for a long time. And no joy. So, what if silence, rather than being, that which provides a lingua franca in troubled times; something that offers an alternative locus of faithful practice called forth by the historic moment; is something less straightforwardly benign? What if what we have be given is a Mount Horeb moment; what if if like Elijah we are called to witness the the ‘silence’ of God, for no other purpose than to prophesy without fear?
Jack, just started composing a response in my head. Already it is growing way too long. Maybe I need to sit back a while and reflect!
I recommend hard labour. Soon.
Jack. You would be well adviced to read the two nong commenst I have just posted in freverse order; i.e the second first. Sorry for incompetence.