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
Kenna- Thank you for your email and for your kind words. And I agree it is a fine community here for which I am very grateful.
I was a musician once myself. So I am very familiar with the agony and ecstasy of being a musician and with the often dire pitfalls of the music scene. A very talented Violinist/Fiddler once put it like this, "I have done heroin and cocaine, but there is no high like a music high." I think there is a spiritual element in the kind of experience music can bring us. There is also a danger as things can get, shall we say, a bit unhinged. I eventually left it behind. I don't regret that choice. I know what it's like to unravel.
As for, "what now?", I am certainly no one to give counsel. But having been lost many times I will just offer this: 1) Find time to sit quietly in silence. It is enough to find a quiet spot out in a park or in nature and just sit there. Nothing needs to be done. Make sure to breathe. 2) Go to the bookstore and look for a book that calls out to you.A classic is far better than something new. My first book on this path was the Tao Te Ching. A book I find helps me to this day. 3) Just begin. None of us really know where we are headed. So we trust as we can.
I hope that is useful. Take it for what it's worth. Thank you again for being part of this conversation.
Jack, thank you for your kindness in offering some counsel. Solitude in nature is indeed my go-to but not of late. I suspect it’s why I am tending to the unhinged, under the mountain of doing at the beginning of the school year. I write a lot; to old band mates and other songwriters who like words and that helps. Framing the passage of time in a lyrical turn feels healing a bit. But a good, old book! Now there’s a thought. Meister Eckhart keeps popping up all over the place and though his work is not currently in the towering bedside pile, I feel the pull. Thank you for the considering prompt. And then, well there’s that is silent stillness, something I feel I must defend from all my own assaults. The what now is a bit clearer. It seems I need just a little reminder that there can be a marriage in what we do and are. Thank you again, 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.
Peter- This is a question for me. I tried to cultivate silence in stillness in the world for decades. Let's just say what resulted was mixed, at best. I often found myself in a place exactly opposite of where I thought I was headed. I am a childless* bachelor and didn't have the kind of responsibilities you do. And yet it was still difficult.
I have to assume an integration of silence and doing in ordinary life is possible. Yet all the distractions and pressures and noise made this very difficult...at least for me. Being up here in silence and having the opportunity to practice stillness makes a difference, thought it isn't the cause of anything it seems. It has begun, I hope, to allow a lot of what triggered reactive behaviors to fall away. If I do go back to the world of noise it will be interesting to see how stable the silence is and whether I simply just get caught up in it all again. A real possibility.
I think about words and silence as well. I find myself now paying attention to writers who can invoke silence and stillness through words. I want to study that while keeping in mind it isn't something mechanical, e.g., about syntax or vocabulary. Though it might use a different manner of speaking, it isn't that manner of speaking.
But ultimately, I agree with you...all of this isn't within our power. I recall what I think is a Sufi saying, but is probably echoed in many traditions, "it can't be found be seeking, but only those who seek it will find it." Maybe that is not entirely true. But it is probably something to ponder.
I hope all is well at the Petrine homestead. How is the novel coming along?
I think it’s difficult irrespective of our responsibilities. When I was a bachelor, the psychological space was filled by other noise, most of all my own ruminations about life. Nature abhors a vacuum. So does the mind it seems.
I do think a certain kind of ordinary integration of silence with life is possible. I experience it when I write, at a process level, and during certain other activities, and sometimes in nature. These are generic “flow” experiences, nothing revelatory, but the self does fall far into the background, the experience of time changes, and a quiet absorption takes over. One feels pulled rather than pushing. And when it’s over, one feels refreshed, a bit inspired, not burned out.
Another way to think of all this is as vocation and purpose. What am I called to do? What are you called to do? What gives us hope and life? Within this context, silence may be a primary goal (e.g., in a monastic context), or it may be something that balances out and helps stabilize a noisier existence (e.g., life in the city). Silence functions with a different emphasis in both cases, yet I think it’s indispensable in both if one is to remain grounded and rational and creative. I think this need is tied up, in part, with mind/brain functions, although that’s a deeper topic.
The falling away of “reactive behaviors” seems to me very important. Both in myself and in others, I have seen people getting caught up not only in reactive behaviors, but reactionary modes of existence, where one’s self-definition is largely a mirror image of one’s enemy. There’s a lot of emotional currency in that; the media industry thrives on it. But it’s poison. I’ve heard the word “proactionary” used to describe the opposite, which is to live based on a pre-existing sense of what one values. For myself, a follower of the Christian faith, that seems right.
My novel is with editors right now. Thank you for asking. I am hoping they can make it a bit better before it is released into the world to be “consumed” (in every sense of that unsettling word). The Petrine household is good. The chickens are laying reliably, producing very nice eggs.
Peter- Have you ever read the book Poustinia by Catherine Doherty? I think it is something that is aligned in a way with what we are both saying. A way to cultivate a deeper sense of silence while still being mostly in the world.
Is there a tentative release date for your novel? -Jack
The novel’s release date hasn’t been set, as the editing (I’ve been told) can be a several-month long process. I can certainly let you know once I get a better idea.
I have not yet read Poustinia, but will make note of it. Other (non-fiction books) I have on my radar are the McGilchrist book (working slowly through that), and some recent recommendations from an Orthodox friend, including The Path to Salvation by St Theophan the Recluse, and Seraphim Rose’s book on Nihilism (which is also available for free on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Lr4JiS5aY). I have no idea when I will be able to get to these, but it’s always good to have a list.
Jack, I will try to arrange for a copy to be sent to you (assuming the postal Machine reaches that deep into the wilderness!). Do you have an email I could write to directly? You can let me know at my admin email, peterofbasilea@protonmail.com.
"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.
Sunshine- I also ask myself a lot whether human thinking can escape circularity and the disguised will-to-power. And if so how? On the one hand human reason has created so many mind-boggling things--whether or not they are to our benefit. On the other, we have an extremely difficult time agreeing on how to live and how to organize social and communal life. This seems to make serious conflict inevitable. This is a vicious circle. The political conflict intensifies and so we double down on our efforts to prove our own position right. But so is the other person. Can it even end? How so? This has gone into runaway mode lately.
As for whether or not we can escape the will-to-power I think we can. At least I hope we can. The future looks very dark to me if we can't. It may take long practice and dedication to start to have the will-to-power dismantled. If it is only a veneer of doing so then when push comes to shove, well...then shove will come to push. And off we go to destruction. But it is more than just practice, it means being willing to give up everything, including one's own life. The alternative is constant conflict which will, I think, eventuate in a war of all against all.
The choice has been laid out for us. It is simple, but is anything but easy. I am surely not saying I could do it.
Thank you for being part of this conversation. Be well. -Jack
During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived – everyone except the Zen master. Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was.
When he wasn’t treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger. “You fool,” he shouted as he reached for his sword, “don’t you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!” But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved.
“And do you realize,” the master replied calmly, “that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?”
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
Diana- I think you are right. I have been drawn (called?) to the via negativa for a while. Not that I have always listened, mind you. The rational mind seeks to create maps so that we can negotiate reality more successfully. Putting aside for the moment that our maps can, and often are, faulty. The territory--so to speak--of silence and unknowing cannot be mapped, by definition. It takes a leap of faith and trust. Given our brokenness this isn't always easy (for me) to do. Much easier is to study the maps and be an armchair traveller, as it were.
Being out here in the remote wilderness, silence is much easier. It is just there. All I have to do is consent to it and let it do its work. It is a baffling and surprising experience. One that I have yet to be able to begin to describe, let alone understand. I am new to it. This has encouraged me to take my "formal" silence practice in meditation/prayer/contemplation more seriously. It is what I can do on my end to open up and just wait.
For what it's worth.
Thank you for being here for this conversation. I hope you are well. -Jack
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.
Naomi- Thank you for your comment. There is a lot here to think about. I look forward to hearing your poetic response as well!
I went to a handful of Quaker meetings after college (a long time ago now). I went with a friend and at her suggestion. This could be said to mark my first forays into something resembling a "spiritual life". It's been a winding path since then to say the least. But perhaps those meetings set the agenda, so to speak. The agendless agenda.
Mostly though, I have been so focused on words, and philosophical systems. I've cycled through more than a few. Hopefully, that wasn't time completely wasted. Yet, in silence "something" happens and I am finding it very difficult to describe what that is. At least with my previous conception of things. So I am allowing myself to let that go and let it be. My hope is that silence teaches us how to speak from silence. So it is a matter of waiting without expectation.
I know only a little about process theology, having read a book or two a while back. I will look into Matthew Segall when I can. So much stuff! Do I have it right that you went to a Dzogchen Center? If so, how does that relate to Quaker meetings and silence?
Do you know Jack, it was my experience at Dzogchen Beara that I think lead me to the Quaker meeting. I've been trying to write about it but my Naturopathic studies have been taking priority as I'm nearing the end of my second year. The meeting I attended was what I think you'd describe as unprogrammed. Some of the members were fairly liberal and had taken part in meditation sessions at Dzogchen themselves. It was a video from the Irish annual meeting that inspired me to attend; a lecture given by Eco-Quaker Lynn Finnegan that was very emotive.
I had the thought yesterday that if the world went local again, so to speak, what the spiritual life of Ireland would look like in say 500 years. I wish I were a novelist!!
That is an interesting thought! I don't think I could make a successful prediction! At the moment the life blood of my local community is GAA (Gaelic football). Children miss Mass to attend training (much to the priest's disgust). There're also unusual ancient festivals derived from the Gaelic calendar that people still flock to. Take a look at Puck Fair https://puckfair.ie/ held in Killorglin. A goat is crowned king atop a tall platform in the town square! That'll make for an interesting novel!! I suppose anything for the craic!
I went to a quaker meeting for the first time this year too. There's something profound at work there and I was so moved, I immediately read as much as I could on quakerism and tried to understand it and now I've not been back for weeks. Letting go and trusting the silence is so hard. I like the idea of a God in flux. I also love the Arsensios option, but I'm pretty rubbish at it!
Liam- I am the same way. Isn't it interesting though? We have this profound experience beyond words and the first thing I am inclined to do is consume as many words as I can about it! In my own case, I have to wonder if this is my unwillingness to surrender to the unknown and unknowable. The light shines in darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it.
I keep wanting the upper hand, to be in "control". This is definitely something I need to let go of. I don't think it is something I can "work at" as that again puts *me* in the driver's seat. Yet I keep crashing the car and wondering why. My hope for this time is that I can simply let go and trust. I will keep you posted.
Let us know if you go back to a Quaker meeting and how that goes.
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.
Benjamin- Excellent reference catch! I thought about using the whole title, but felt the first part was enough. And I have not even read that book, though I went through a phase long ago of reading Watts. Interesting guy. Great title, though.
But to the main point, I think this is right. But I say that only from perhaps having received small glimpses of it in my life. What does seem clear is that it isn't an achievement, or something I attain. When one does receive a glimpse it is as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Probably because it is.
If anything the process--a horrible word for this, but I'll go with it--is more about dismantling what interferes with our seeing what is already there, rather than getting something. In this I think there is room for our own full participation in this. I think it might require it, absent special grace. As long as we keep in mind when and if it happens it wasn't our doing in the slightest. The warning that to be confused about this is to risk ego-inflation or breakdown rather than breakthrough.
I don't really think that the U.S. and maybe the West in general has built up the kind of depth of insight yet, i.e., a full tradition of practice, to prevent the kind of aberrations that this kind of insight can bring. Hopefully we will. Institutions can be a mixed blessing in this sense. They can contain it, but also stifle it. Untethered and charismatic teachers who are supposedly enlightened can, and have, caused a lot of trouble for people.
This is where, again, I wish I were a novelist--and while we are at it even a good one--to try to fathom what that might possibly look like in 500 years if such a culture were to be cultivated and arise.
Okay, I just went off on a tangent. More importantly, how was your time in the wilderness?
Yeah, several years ago I went through an Alan Watts phase and read pretty much everything he wrote. I still think he's immensely worth reading, but sadly in our fallen world far more spiritual discipline is required than Watts was prepared to acknowledge, simply because the world is constantly trying to push you off kilter.
In a world like ours, stillness, silence, spontaneity, and constantly seeing the presence of God, requires constant spiritual discipline, constant reminders, self corrections, and self reorientations, so that you don't get "sucked in" to the way of the World, and don't get pushed into their habits. You have to resist that pull, and every manner of technique must be employed, from periods of solitude in the wilderness to morning prayers that reorient you towards the Divine and away from the World, even as you prepare to go work in the World.
The phrase apparently comes from a Cold Mountain poem, I think - a visitor to the mountain asks where he can find old Han Shan, and is told hes out in the mist picking herbs, cloud hidden whereabouts unknown.
It's such a lovely evocation.
My time in the wild was, as always, fantastic. I cannot stop marvelling at the grandeur and magnificent of Utah redrock country - surely one of the best places to see the presence of the Divine.
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- Then it is happening!! This is excellent news! Is it Maine? Please share with us whatever you feel appropriate. I am very interested. I hope this will be the beginning of something beautiful and good however difficult. May it bear fruit far beyond what we know and can see.
Thank you for your kind words. I am grateful for your comments and for the conversation here. May it continue to grow out there beyond the confines of the virtual world. I hope so.
Yes, it is a farm in the foothills of the western mountains of Maine. The town is called Buckfield. We are making an offer but there is another offer also, so this is not a done deal. The chaos is our preparing our home for listing.
From what little I can tell from photos on the internet it looks like a beautiful place. Will you have land to be able to farm? Or micro-farm as they say?
we just visited on Monday. It is a small rural community and the land is beautiful around there. The particular home we are after has 24 acres of land.... less than some but a large part is very lush pasture with good soil. We have a lot to learn to make use of that amount. Pray for us as we do for you in this crazy stage of late capitalism.
I am praying and will continue to pray for you all. It is a crazy time no doubt. But that also means that something different is possible. A farm in Maine is good!
“(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?
John- Thank you for this substantive response. For the record I have no problem whatsoever such critiques. I welcome them. My hope for this little substack is to allow for exactly this type of conversation. So let 'em rip!
You are not alone in pushing back against what I am saying. This is similar to the kind of response Rod Dreher gets to his Benedict Option. Though he protests that this is unfair as it isn't what he saying (though what he is saying isn't always clear or consistent). But it is what I am saying, so your criticism is a fair one. I will probably have to defer responding to many of your points at the moment. Hopefully, this will be a continuing conversation. But I will respond on two fronts and see where that goes.
1) Yes there have always been issues with civilization and with oppression, etc. It is simple to point out times where it would have been far more chaotic than it is now, at least in physical terms than in the postmodern West. And similarly, there have always been those who, in lesser or greater numbers, have sought to flee this noise seeing it as toxic. So far, so good. My question is whether our technological civilization has now arrived at something quite new and different, i.e., no merely a matter of degree, but of kind. There is a continuity with our previous civilization, no doubt. But this may obscure from us the nature of what we are facing. This is a point that is, of course, open for debate.
It will come as no surprise that my answer is that, yes, we have so arrived. And that it doesn't look like it is going to slow down, to contrary, short of partial or total collapse. So the normal ways of seeking to leave the world of noise, distraction and ambition will also likely increase. In another sense, any civilization that doesn't not allow there to be an "outside" to it is one that is in trouble, and not only spiritually. My own sense, both intellectually and from direct experience is that much of our society has become toxic and that it has formed us in ways that make it almost immune from criticism. It may not surprise you, but I have hardly been afraid to voice my views on things. Just ask my coworkers. But it was shouting into the void, even for those who might be sympathetic to what I was saying. The gravity of the system, so to speak, was just to strong. It simply became chatter. Similarly, I have waiting in the church for years for a (quasi)prophetic sermon. For the most part, I have waited in vain. Even when in private it is acknowledged that there are some serious issues, little is said from the pulpit. I will leave it to others to say why.
2) How to respond? Though here I am having this discussion on substack and on the internet I am skeptical about the virtual world of rhetoric we have created and is creating us in return. I would love that there might be a St. John Chrysostom for our time. But where is he? Even if he's here, could his voice rise above the virtual noise and distraction or not just get absorbed into the sea of irrelevance the noise machine creates? I have my doubts whether or not he could. But I hope he shows up. I hope he is here.
I will offer instead what might be called the Seraphim of Sarov Option (so many options!) as a close cousin to the Arsenios Option but with a difference. I imagine you know his story. But I will offer this short video (8 min) that tells his story well:
St. Seraphim spent a long life in monasticism and finally in solitude out in the forests of Russia. This was neither an easy or quick training. It was only near the end of his life that he returned to Monastery and eventually made himself available. I think the "available hermit" notion is a way to not be closed off entirely from the world. He apparently had many visitors who sought his counsel. Many of whom were influential in the world. This may be a way forward.
Right now this period of silence for me is on a three month trial period. I may be back down into the valley of noise before very long. Three months is hardly enough time to scratch the surface of silence, yet it is something. Any time in silence is something I am grateful for. Be that as it may, I think it would be fruitful to find ways to create realms of silence--is schools of silence too much?--where those called to it in various ways can find it. And maybe from long training in silence a Chrysostom might emerge. Who knows?
I am very interested in not only speaking about silence, but more importantly from, and even *as* silence. I think that might have a deeper effect on people's hearts. That is my hope anyway.
My apologies for this long response. Thank you again. I hope you are well. -Jack
A difference in kind? I am tempted to ask how you would describe that ‘kind’? Are we to think that the world has changed to such an extent and at such a pace that the resulting ‘qualitative transformation’ exceeds the potential of the human mind to understand? This seems to me to be a difficult position to hold: if for no better reason than that it seems to hold as a given that there are limits to human sense-making that are not operative in all spheres of human activity.
This is not suggest that I have to be able to ‘understand’ everything I do in an absolute sense, but I do need to make sense of it sufficient for my own purposes, right? Put differently, I might say the an absence of consensus with respect to whether or not the world is going to hell in a hand cart does not demonstrate, necessarily that ‘human reason’ has arrived at its frontier.
Is it, perhaps, more in line with your position to claim that the ‘change in kind’ signals toward a more millenarianism kind of a thing? By which I mean, are we (for whatever set of causes) in a state of being, as a species, that exists in a liminal space twixt the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’. So, the limits of human sense-making have been reached because they gaze upon the harbingers of Mystery?
I have more to say about this. But I need to do some thinking. Thanks for your patience, your open-ness , and your willingness to reflect. And, yes, I am pretty good, thanks. Doing so odd reading, at the moment. But that is another story. John.
PS in case I forget: next up, to what degree is 'silence' necessary to Christianity?
John- I don't think we are merely coming up against the limits of reason we are being presented with the strong possibility that the limits were there all along.
But if that is true how would I prove it to you or anyone. Is there anyway to slip outside the hermeneutic circle of rationality.
How do you decide between?:
1. We have hit the limits of reason.
2. We have not hit such limits.
3. Reason cannot detect any such limits.
4. Reason has detected these limits.
Take this guy for example, Daniel Schmactenberger in a (6 min) video entitled, "If We Don't Fix Sensemaking, We Won't Survive". I applaud his effort but is it even doable? My hunch is probably not. It is taking the problem of the foundations of reason i.e., "sensemaking" and at the same time avoid the hermeneutic circle. It seems to me he is just trying to construct a larger circle of circles within circles. As if adding more turtles to the infinite pile of turtles, one will find bedrock.
Have you read McGilchrist? I find him interesting, but perhaps he runs up against the same problem. But I take the subtitle of his latest tome to be indicative of something important: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World.
But I cannot give a set of universal, indubitable propositions for what I am saying. I don't think anyone can, but that's not for me to decide. And maybe it's more a matter of this is where I get off from being on this particular ride. In the remaining time on the earth I seek something else. Something that is more local, more communal and has copious opportunities for silence. Which may or may not happen. I think that is what we are more fit for, though that has its problems too, obviously.
I don't really seek to convince anyone, only to offer the limited things I see. And to listen to what others see. It is what I can do. For what that is worth.
I will also meditate on this some more. Thank you for the discussion.
We signed up for a six month tour of duty. But we stayed for two years. At that time there were two Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality in London. We spent our first six month in Dorothy Day House (DDH). Resting under the lip of a tumbling strip of housing project that ran the length, more or less, of the old East End’s northern edge, following as it did the trail provided by the Grand Union Canal, DDH was a three bed-roomed house that was home for five destitute refugees, each from a different country, and Mr & Mrs Hamblett. (As serendipity would have it, buried deeper in the same housing project, in a small flat on the 13th floor of a high-rise block, lived, prayed and entertained four nuns, Little Sisters of Jesus, an order in the de Foucauld family.)
In addition to being a crowded house, DDH was also the hub to which all food donations were delivered. With the aid of locals and supporters the food was freighted out to those in need on the estate, and to Peter’s Cafe. In addition to keeping DDH in order, Mr & Mrs Hamblett also ran Peter’s Cafe. The cafe was the public face of the London Catholic Worker in Hackney. It wasn’t really a cafe. It was more like a soup kitchen. Or, on some days, an arm’s length antechamber for the local psychiatric hospital. The fact that we had a menu with prices written on it notwithstanding, we gave away at least 90 per cent of everything we cooked. This apparent generosity can be explained by reference to the fact that at least 90 per cent of our ‘customers’ were street homeless self-medicators of one kind or another, and the neighbourhood booze shops and drug dealers had a stronger claim on their disposable income than Peter’s Cafe.
After six months of this colourful life in the East End, a decision was taken to close down DDH and Peter’s Cafe in order to concentrate resources and personnel at Giuseppe Conlon House (GCH), the Catholic Worker HQ in Haringay, north London. GCH comprised a de-commissioned Catholic Church, its church hall and presbytery. The community members lived in the presbytery, the church hall was used for public events, and the church hall was a night shelter providing an evening, a bed and breakfast for 30 male, destitute refugees every night of the year, but for a week at Christmas. We lived and worked there for something like 18 months. Then we returned to France.
Watching the movie on Dorothy’s life last night made something happen. Not an epiphany as such. This has something to do with it: After her death Fr Dan Berrigan wrote that Dorothy, “lived the Gospel as though it were true”. That is the mark of any saint. It is certainly the mark of St Ignatius Loyola, St Charles de Foucauld, and Servant of God Dorothy Day. The surface image of each of those lives demonstrates something of the diverse ways in which such a “living out” can appear. It may be the case that beneath that ‘surface’ the denominator common to each of these, and to all who comprise the communion of saints, is the praxis of silence.
Fr Voillaume does not think that to be the case. He writes that:
“Let me emphasise that there is but one thing that can bring about unity inside us, as also in our lives - and very specially between prayer and action - and that is love. Jesus’ command is that we love God and our fellow men up to death to ourselves. That is perfection. Perfection does not come automatically with any station in life, contemplative or not. It is not because one spends habitually long hours at prayer, or even because one embraces, say, the rule of the Carthusian monk or the Carmelite nun, that one will necessarily accomplish a work of perfection. Leading a contemplative life is not necessary to perfection as such, but love is, and always is. Even in the act of try contemplative prayer, it is well to remember those strong words of St Paul’s: ‘ I may speak with every tongue that men and angels use; yet if I lack charity, I am no better than echoing bronze or the clash of cymbals. I may have powers of prophecy, no secret hidden from me, no knowledge too deep for me; I may have utter faith so that I can move mountains; yet if I ,lack charity I count for nothing’ (iCor. 13:1-2).”
I would not wish you to imagine either (1) that I see ‘silence’ and ‘love’ as competing or conflicting aspects of Christian faith; or (2) that ‘silence’ is anything other than a necessary practice within a fully-rounded Christian prayer life. I would, however and without reserve, pin my colours to the mast that Fr Voillaume trims.
Thank you for this. Yes, discussing the nature of human reason in the postmodern age is not unlike trying to play tag in a hall of mirrors. Fun for a little while, but quickly becomes pointless. But it also says a lot about where we have arrived. It is also, not incidentally, fundamental to what I am trying to express. Though it is usually more implicit.
But your latest comments are more fruitful for discussion. I appreciate all you have to say here. I have no basic disagreement with any of it.
I will indulge some general biography in response. I am an American Gen-x'er. My cultural inheritance could be described as suburbs, sitcoms and corn syrup. I say this with only the slightest touch of exaggeration. Little, if anything cultural was free from the machinations of corporations. Which certainly did not have our best interests at heart and was the opposite of a map for a good life. I asked my mother why there wasn't otherwise more guidance on how to live. She responded, tellingly, "we didn't know either" (she is silent generation). The blind raising the blind.
Overall, I have likened that time to living after a cultural neutron bomb had been dropped. It looked like the "Fifties" but much had already come largely untethered (to be honest, though I wasn't there, I doubt the Fifties was entirely "the Fifties"). Or rather the shell of institutions remained intact but the core had been hollowed out. Though in retrospect there was a lot left to still dismantle. A process that continues to this day.
There was no guidance at school, my parents were lost too, popular culture (which was neither truly "of the people" and less a culture and more of an anticulture) the sexual revolution, drugs and on and on. I went to college during the first "great awokening" of the late '80s early '90s. Thankfully, as a music student I was mostly immune from that, though not entirely if you wanted to get a date outside the music dept.
So here I am firmly ensconced in middle age, unmarried, no children I have been led to a time as a semi-hermit at a remote Benedictine Monastery and writing this substack. Neither of which I would have predicted even a year ago. Very strange.
I waited in vain in the Church for any guidance. Other than to "do the things" and not make a fuss. Let alone any prophetic witness to the nature of our times (there actually was some when attended a Latin Mass parish) and in some cases a near denial that anything was amiss. Which I found baffling.
Finally, and paradoxically, here in silence and stillness, *something is finally happening*!! Though it is difficult to say what, being in silence is changing me in ways I have longed for but could never otherwise find in the disaster of the culture.
The monastic community here is very small. Part of the ministry is a retreat house, but otherwise there are only 3 monks--and myself, for however long. I think a lot about scope and depth and how God is continually trying to deep and expand what we are capable of, resist though we might. But what an immense revolution it would be if we could learn to truly love the few people around us! This, at least for now, is my task and the extent of my scope.
All that said, I still believe that there is a calling to a life of silence, full stop. And that this too can be a way to serve our brothers and sisters. But that isn't fully it either. My belief is that we have arrived at something quite different. Some call it the meta-crisis, or convergence of catastrophes. Can I prove this? No. Have there been similar predictions that have failed to materialize? Yes. My sense of it, and it is just that, is not really Biblical, so much, but purely observational. I think that things have changed fundamentally and will continue to change in disturbing ways.
If I am speaking to anyone with this substack it is to those who have grown up in the anti-culture and with a lack of guidance and cultural stability. We need to find a way through this whatever the future brings.
Hopefully that wasn't *too* rambling. Thank you again for this conversation.
Finding myself in a debate concerning the ‘hermeneutic circle’ usually means I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere back down the road. Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa. So. Rewind. Take Two. Every morning Liz and I have a long litany to pray at the end of the Morning office, woven out of fibres from the community of saints. I haven’t checked with her but I think its OK to say that three of that community are of particular significance to the daily out-working of our Faith.
The first of these, not on the podium but in the order of the litany, is St Ignatius of Loyola. (ora pro nobis) A small man. Backwoods aristocrat by birth. Bad tempered and vain. By most accounts, a difficult man to get along with. The fact that he is one of the outstanding spiritual giants in the history of the faith is a point too obvious to elaborate. Two years ago, Liz and I made a more than memorable journey overland to Manresa in Catalonia. If you’re interested I could tell you about it, sometime. Anyway, there we made the 30 Day Exercises in the Jesuit Spirituality Centre that is built over the cave where Ignatius is said to have written the first draft of the Exercises in 1522.
Second up is St Charles de Foucauld. AKA Brother Charles of Jesus. (ora pro nobis) Born of filthy rich old school aristocrats in Strasbourg. Full name: Charles Eugene de Foucauld de Pontbriand. Died during the First World War as a the result of what was probably an accidental shooting while a bunch of Tuareg tribesman trashed his hermitage looking for guns he didn’t have. In between times, after quitting his posh Jesuit school, he had lived a dissolute playboy life while wearing the uniform of a cavalry officer in the French army. The army were smart enough to kick him out. After that he got interesting. Disguised as a Jewish scholar he travelled through Morocco; a country still, at that time, closed to westerners. This wasn’t a holiday it was an anthropological expedition. The Royal Society in Paris awarded him a Gold Medal for the ensuing book.
Entranced by the embodied faith of the Muslims he encountered on his trip, on his return to France he underwent his own conversion experience. First stop, L’Abbaye de Notre Dame de Nieges; a Trappist monastery in the mountains of the Ardeche. (During our French life, Liz and I made a week retreat there; it has a beautiful chapel dedicated to the Saint.) As austere a life as this was, Charles was looking for something that required a greater degree of self-emptying. In quick order, his journey downwards took him to a second Trappist house in Syria; a job as a handyman for the Poor Clares in Bethlehem, where he lived in their garden shed; and, finally into the Algerian desert, where he divided his time between living among the Tuareg in Tamanghasse; and Assekrem, the highest peak in the area where he built a retreat.
At some point on this story-line he gave away all his money. Outwardly, he busied himself writing the first Tuareg-French dictionary, and recording his neighbours’ folk tales. The locals, all muslims, referred to him as the ‘Holy Man’. Like St Francis of Assisi before him, Brother Charles counselled those who would be his followers to ‘preach' the Gospel through the example of the ‘hidden’ lives they lived as brothers and sisters to the poorest of the poor. Until the day he died, Brother Charles was convinced that God would send him others with whom he would build a Fraternity. But the only witness to his accidental demise was the sixteen year old boy who fired the rifle. Heck, he didn’t even make a single convert. Failure on a spectacular scale, eh?
Liz and I were members of the Lay Community that forms part of the world-wide ‘family’ of religious that, thanks largely to the formative work of Fr. Rene Voillaume, embody the vision of St Charles de Foucauld. When Pope Francis raised St Charles to the High Alter on 15 May 2022, he was just colouring in a public picture that the tens of thousands of devotees had carried in their hearts for a century. His ‘Prayer of Abandonment’ is the bridge between the formal close of our Morning Prayer and the prayer of the Litany of Saints. Guess, you never can tell with God.
Finally, Servant of God, Dorothy Day.(ora pro nobis) Every knee should bend at that name. It really is Dorothy’s fault that I am writing this. Last night Liz and I watched, Revolution of The Heart: The Dorothy Day Story. Now I am guessing that being an American kind of a chap you will require nothing of a biographical nature with respect to Dorothy. My route to Dorothy Day is a peculiar one. Something else I could tell you about depending on your degree of curiosity. Anyhow, Liz and I spent some time as community members of the London Catholic Worker. It happened like this.
During our time in France Liz found herself in the neurological intensive care unit at Limoges Hospital. During the five days she spent in that unit she came just about as close to death as a person can come and return to tell the tale. The rocky trail of set-back and recuperation found us, some months down the line, packing our bags for a trip to London. Just prior to our move out to France we had, as members of Contemplative Outreach UK, attended a retreat with Fr Thomas Keating on the Centring Prayer, which had become the heart of our spiritual practice by this time. And, it was time spent in silence, in our French house, that served to confirm our decision to enter the London Catholic Worker.
I will add one short coda to my already overlong response. In the silence here I feel the contradiction of silence and being on the internet. It isn't easy to resolve. Maybe it will become apparent over time. It isn't clear to me right now.
Honestly, if I had the means I might rather have a small community of silence. Somewhere away from things. I try to take a long view on all this. The response we are all groping for may actually be one that takes centuries to form. Assuming humans have that kind of time. I hope and think we do. Who knows?
I don't have the means so the gravitation of the valley of noise may pull me back in. We shall see. -Jack
Camilla- Thank you for the gentle nudge and more importantly for the thoughtful comment. It is interesting how those of us who talked about these kind of issues in the past only received blank stares and awkward pauses. I know this well. It was as if simply relating what one saw was a social faux pas. And now, ironically. it is through technology that we are starting to get our message across.
Even still, I think it will take a few more shocks to the system--and a few more knocks to our heads--for us to really consider living differently than we have lived up to this point. Really, we should have been on this decades ago. But I have hope, though it is often a dark hope. We can continue and carry the fire of what is most valuable and deep and true about being a human being on this planet. We can start living as if on the "other side" of the catastrophe right now.
I believe it is as you say. Many more people now sense that something is "off" more or less. Our own mode of engaging the world, via our education system and upbringing etc., is unable--and in many ways unwilling--to fully confront what is going on around us and within us. We are literally disabled by our worldview. This needs to change. But you can now ask people--people who otherwise seem optimistic and adjusted to the way things are--what their gut tells them about how things are going. These same people tend to reveal that they don't think it is going well at all. There is a odd kind of hope in that too.
I have been thinking lately that we will have to face this metacrisis in a different way. It is our problem-solving that is the problem. We have turned the world, and our lives, into a problem to be solved, as if it were simple machine or equation and we just needed to crunch the numbers and do the math to figure it out. We live in a broken world, one that obscures the great mystery of being by turning everything into a function in a great machine.
So when I offer the Arsenios Option it is meant far more than just a way out physically speaking. It is also a way to engage the world in a completely different way. Silent contemplation is not just an adjunct to our utilitarian minds and goals, but its overthrow. It is turning things back upside down, which is actually right side up.
Enough from me.
Thank you for your comment. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you and everyone.
Camilla- Obviously I didn't express myself well. I am certainly not accusing you of anything. Simply a general observation--one made far better and more comprehensively by Iain McGilchrist and others--that we have a civilization of technique and instrumental rationality. This has been very powerful in many ways that has allowed for the "triumph of the West", economically, politically, militarily etc.
This has also been at the root, as I see it, of our current crisis. And will likely be our and everyone's undoing. Yet, we--as a civilization--keep thinking we can use the same technical processes that got us into the mess to get us out, i.e., that the world is a dead system that can be engineered to our liking without consequence. This not only fails to extricate us but seems only to ensnare us further.
Again, following McGilchrist, I therefore see the need to find a different new/old way of being in the world. The need to understand ourselves and our relation to the world in a deeper, more comprehensive and very different way than what has gotten us here. A way other than what has been dominant for quite some time. I am a nobody trying to add my small understanding to this movement. That's all.
I don't know if that does any better. I hope it does.
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
Kenna- Thank you for your email and for your kind words. And I agree it is a fine community here for which I am very grateful.
I was a musician once myself. So I am very familiar with the agony and ecstasy of being a musician and with the often dire pitfalls of the music scene. A very talented Violinist/Fiddler once put it like this, "I have done heroin and cocaine, but there is no high like a music high." I think there is a spiritual element in the kind of experience music can bring us. There is also a danger as things can get, shall we say, a bit unhinged. I eventually left it behind. I don't regret that choice. I know what it's like to unravel.
As for, "what now?", I am certainly no one to give counsel. But having been lost many times I will just offer this: 1) Find time to sit quietly in silence. It is enough to find a quiet spot out in a park or in nature and just sit there. Nothing needs to be done. Make sure to breathe. 2) Go to the bookstore and look for a book that calls out to you.A classic is far better than something new. My first book on this path was the Tao Te Ching. A book I find helps me to this day. 3) Just begin. None of us really know where we are headed. So we trust as we can.
I hope that is useful. Take it for what it's worth. Thank you again for being part of this conversation.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Jack, thank you for your kindness in offering some counsel. Solitude in nature is indeed my go-to but not of late. I suspect it’s why I am tending to the unhinged, under the mountain of doing at the beginning of the school year. I write a lot; to old band mates and other songwriters who like words and that helps. Framing the passage of time in a lyrical turn feels healing a bit. But a good, old book! Now there’s a thought. Meister Eckhart keeps popping up all over the place and though his work is not currently in the towering bedside pile, I feel the pull. Thank you for the considering prompt. And then, well there’s that is silent stillness, something I feel I must defend from all my own assaults. The what now is a bit clearer. It seems I need just a little reminder that there can be a marriage in what we do and are. Thank you again, 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.
Peter- This is a question for me. I tried to cultivate silence in stillness in the world for decades. Let's just say what resulted was mixed, at best. I often found myself in a place exactly opposite of where I thought I was headed. I am a childless* bachelor and didn't have the kind of responsibilities you do. And yet it was still difficult.
I have to assume an integration of silence and doing in ordinary life is possible. Yet all the distractions and pressures and noise made this very difficult...at least for me. Being up here in silence and having the opportunity to practice stillness makes a difference, thought it isn't the cause of anything it seems. It has begun, I hope, to allow a lot of what triggered reactive behaviors to fall away. If I do go back to the world of noise it will be interesting to see how stable the silence is and whether I simply just get caught up in it all again. A real possibility.
I think about words and silence as well. I find myself now paying attention to writers who can invoke silence and stillness through words. I want to study that while keeping in mind it isn't something mechanical, e.g., about syntax or vocabulary. Though it might use a different manner of speaking, it isn't that manner of speaking.
But ultimately, I agree with you...all of this isn't within our power. I recall what I think is a Sufi saying, but is probably echoed in many traditions, "it can't be found be seeking, but only those who seek it will find it." Maybe that is not entirely true. But it is probably something to ponder.
I hope all is well at the Petrine homestead. How is the novel coming along?
-Jack
I think it’s difficult irrespective of our responsibilities. When I was a bachelor, the psychological space was filled by other noise, most of all my own ruminations about life. Nature abhors a vacuum. So does the mind it seems.
I do think a certain kind of ordinary integration of silence with life is possible. I experience it when I write, at a process level, and during certain other activities, and sometimes in nature. These are generic “flow” experiences, nothing revelatory, but the self does fall far into the background, the experience of time changes, and a quiet absorption takes over. One feels pulled rather than pushing. And when it’s over, one feels refreshed, a bit inspired, not burned out.
Another way to think of all this is as vocation and purpose. What am I called to do? What are you called to do? What gives us hope and life? Within this context, silence may be a primary goal (e.g., in a monastic context), or it may be something that balances out and helps stabilize a noisier existence (e.g., life in the city). Silence functions with a different emphasis in both cases, yet I think it’s indispensable in both if one is to remain grounded and rational and creative. I think this need is tied up, in part, with mind/brain functions, although that’s a deeper topic.
The falling away of “reactive behaviors” seems to me very important. Both in myself and in others, I have seen people getting caught up not only in reactive behaviors, but reactionary modes of existence, where one’s self-definition is largely a mirror image of one’s enemy. There’s a lot of emotional currency in that; the media industry thrives on it. But it’s poison. I’ve heard the word “proactionary” used to describe the opposite, which is to live based on a pre-existing sense of what one values. For myself, a follower of the Christian faith, that seems right.
My novel is with editors right now. Thank you for asking. I am hoping they can make it a bit better before it is released into the world to be “consumed” (in every sense of that unsettling word). The Petrine household is good. The chickens are laying reliably, producing very nice eggs.
Peter- Have you ever read the book Poustinia by Catherine Doherty? I think it is something that is aligned in a way with what we are both saying. A way to cultivate a deeper sense of silence while still being mostly in the world.
Is there a tentative release date for your novel? -Jack
The novel’s release date hasn’t been set, as the editing (I’ve been told) can be a several-month long process. I can certainly let you know once I get a better idea.
I have not yet read Poustinia, but will make note of it. Other (non-fiction books) I have on my radar are the McGilchrist book (working slowly through that), and some recent recommendations from an Orthodox friend, including The Path to Salvation by St Theophan the Recluse, and Seraphim Rose’s book on Nihilism (which is also available for free on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Lr4JiS5aY). I have no idea when I will be able to get to these, but it’s always good to have a list.
Yes, let me know when it is coming out. Barring poverty and indigence I intend to purchase a copy.
I am always reluctant to recommend books as everyone is already inundated. A sign of the times.
Jack, I will try to arrange for a copy to be sent to you (assuming the postal Machine reaches that deep into the wilderness!). Do you have an email I could write to directly? You can let me know at my admin email, peterofbasilea@protonmail.com.
"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.
Sunshine- I also ask myself a lot whether human thinking can escape circularity and the disguised will-to-power. And if so how? On the one hand human reason has created so many mind-boggling things--whether or not they are to our benefit. On the other, we have an extremely difficult time agreeing on how to live and how to organize social and communal life. This seems to make serious conflict inevitable. This is a vicious circle. The political conflict intensifies and so we double down on our efforts to prove our own position right. But so is the other person. Can it even end? How so? This has gone into runaway mode lately.
As for whether or not we can escape the will-to-power I think we can. At least I hope we can. The future looks very dark to me if we can't. It may take long practice and dedication to start to have the will-to-power dismantled. If it is only a veneer of doing so then when push comes to shove, well...then shove will come to push. And off we go to destruction. But it is more than just practice, it means being willing to give up everything, including one's own life. The alternative is constant conflict which will, I think, eventuate in a war of all against all.
The choice has been laid out for us. It is simple, but is anything but easy. I am surely not saying I could do it.
Thank you for being part of this conversation. Be well. -Jack
A Buddhist story that illustrates the point:
During the civil wars in feudal Japan, an invading army would quickly sweep into a town and take control. In one particular village, everyone fled just before the army arrived – everyone except the Zen master. Curious about this old fellow, the general went to the temple to see for himself what kind of man this master was.
When he wasn’t treated with the deference and submissiveness to which he was accustomed, the general burst into anger. “You fool,” he shouted as he reached for his sword, “don’t you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye!” But despite the threat, the master seemed unmoved.
“And do you realize,” the master replied calmly, “that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?”
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
Diana- I think you are right. I have been drawn (called?) to the via negativa for a while. Not that I have always listened, mind you. The rational mind seeks to create maps so that we can negotiate reality more successfully. Putting aside for the moment that our maps can, and often are, faulty. The territory--so to speak--of silence and unknowing cannot be mapped, by definition. It takes a leap of faith and trust. Given our brokenness this isn't always easy (for me) to do. Much easier is to study the maps and be an armchair traveller, as it were.
Being out here in the remote wilderness, silence is much easier. It is just there. All I have to do is consent to it and let it do its work. It is a baffling and surprising experience. One that I have yet to be able to begin to describe, let alone understand. I am new to it. This has encouraged me to take my "formal" silence practice in meditation/prayer/contemplation more seriously. It is what I can do on my end to open up and just wait.
For what it's worth.
Thank you for being here for this conversation. I hope you are well. -Jack
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.
Naomi- Thank you for your comment. There is a lot here to think about. I look forward to hearing your poetic response as well!
I went to a handful of Quaker meetings after college (a long time ago now). I went with a friend and at her suggestion. This could be said to mark my first forays into something resembling a "spiritual life". It's been a winding path since then to say the least. But perhaps those meetings set the agenda, so to speak. The agendless agenda.
Mostly though, I have been so focused on words, and philosophical systems. I've cycled through more than a few. Hopefully, that wasn't time completely wasted. Yet, in silence "something" happens and I am finding it very difficult to describe what that is. At least with my previous conception of things. So I am allowing myself to let that go and let it be. My hope is that silence teaches us how to speak from silence. So it is a matter of waiting without expectation.
I know only a little about process theology, having read a book or two a while back. I will look into Matthew Segall when I can. So much stuff! Do I have it right that you went to a Dzogchen Center? If so, how does that relate to Quaker meetings and silence?
I hope all is well. -Jack
Do you know Jack, it was my experience at Dzogchen Beara that I think lead me to the Quaker meeting. I've been trying to write about it but my Naturopathic studies have been taking priority as I'm nearing the end of my second year. The meeting I attended was what I think you'd describe as unprogrammed. Some of the members were fairly liberal and had taken part in meditation sessions at Dzogchen themselves. It was a video from the Irish annual meeting that inspired me to attend; a lecture given by Eco-Quaker Lynn Finnegan that was very emotive.
Naomi- This is an interesting combination. But it makes a kind of intuitive sense. I wonder where this might lead you? Please keep us updated. -Jack
I suppose I've always been a bit eclectic! Will do Jack :-)
I had the thought yesterday that if the world went local again, so to speak, what the spiritual life of Ireland would look like in say 500 years. I wish I were a novelist!!
That is an interesting thought! I don't think I could make a successful prediction! At the moment the life blood of my local community is GAA (Gaelic football). Children miss Mass to attend training (much to the priest's disgust). There're also unusual ancient festivals derived from the Gaelic calendar that people still flock to. Take a look at Puck Fair https://puckfair.ie/ held in Killorglin. A goat is crowned king atop a tall platform in the town square! That'll make for an interesting novel!! I suppose anything for the craic!
I went to a quaker meeting for the first time this year too. There's something profound at work there and I was so moved, I immediately read as much as I could on quakerism and tried to understand it and now I've not been back for weeks. Letting go and trusting the silence is so hard. I like the idea of a God in flux. I also love the Arsensios option, but I'm pretty rubbish at it!
Liam- I am the same way. Isn't it interesting though? We have this profound experience beyond words and the first thing I am inclined to do is consume as many words as I can about it! In my own case, I have to wonder if this is my unwillingness to surrender to the unknown and unknowable. The light shines in darkness and the darkness cannot comprehend it.
I keep wanting the upper hand, to be in "control". This is definitely something I need to let go of. I don't think it is something I can "work at" as that again puts *me* in the driver's seat. Yet I keep crashing the car and wondering why. My hope for this time is that I can simply let go and trust. I will keep you posted.
Let us know if you go back to a Quaker meeting and how that goes.
I hope you are well. -Jack
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.
Benjamin- Excellent reference catch! I thought about using the whole title, but felt the first part was enough. And I have not even read that book, though I went through a phase long ago of reading Watts. Interesting guy. Great title, though.
But to the main point, I think this is right. But I say that only from perhaps having received small glimpses of it in my life. What does seem clear is that it isn't an achievement, or something I attain. When one does receive a glimpse it is as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Probably because it is.
If anything the process--a horrible word for this, but I'll go with it--is more about dismantling what interferes with our seeing what is already there, rather than getting something. In this I think there is room for our own full participation in this. I think it might require it, absent special grace. As long as we keep in mind when and if it happens it wasn't our doing in the slightest. The warning that to be confused about this is to risk ego-inflation or breakdown rather than breakthrough.
I don't really think that the U.S. and maybe the West in general has built up the kind of depth of insight yet, i.e., a full tradition of practice, to prevent the kind of aberrations that this kind of insight can bring. Hopefully we will. Institutions can be a mixed blessing in this sense. They can contain it, but also stifle it. Untethered and charismatic teachers who are supposedly enlightened can, and have, caused a lot of trouble for people.
This is where, again, I wish I were a novelist--and while we are at it even a good one--to try to fathom what that might possibly look like in 500 years if such a culture were to be cultivated and arise.
Okay, I just went off on a tangent. More importantly, how was your time in the wilderness?
Be well. -Jack
Yeah, several years ago I went through an Alan Watts phase and read pretty much everything he wrote. I still think he's immensely worth reading, but sadly in our fallen world far more spiritual discipline is required than Watts was prepared to acknowledge, simply because the world is constantly trying to push you off kilter.
In a world like ours, stillness, silence, spontaneity, and constantly seeing the presence of God, requires constant spiritual discipline, constant reminders, self corrections, and self reorientations, so that you don't get "sucked in" to the way of the World, and don't get pushed into their habits. You have to resist that pull, and every manner of technique must be employed, from periods of solitude in the wilderness to morning prayers that reorient you towards the Divine and away from the World, even as you prepare to go work in the World.
The phrase apparently comes from a Cold Mountain poem, I think - a visitor to the mountain asks where he can find old Han Shan, and is told hes out in the mist picking herbs, cloud hidden whereabouts unknown.
It's such a lovely evocation.
My time in the wild was, as always, fantastic. I cannot stop marvelling at the grandeur and magnificent of Utah redrock country - surely one of the best places to see the presence of the Divine.
Ha! I didn't know it was a Han Shan reference. Makes sense though, Do you happen to know which poem?
I couldn't agree more with your assessment of Alan Watts. There is good there, but he seems to be a guru for the consumer age. No effort required!
I am glad that your time in Utah was a beautiful one. -Jack
Forgive me, Jack - the poem is actually by Chia Tao, a Chan monk in the 8th century.
I reproduce it here , it is a lovely poem -
SEARCHING FOR THE HERMIT IN VAIN
I asked the boy beneath the pines.
He said, "The master's gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown."
Beautiful. Thank you. At least now I have my allusions straight!
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
Clara- Then it is happening!! This is excellent news! Is it Maine? Please share with us whatever you feel appropriate. I am very interested. I hope this will be the beginning of something beautiful and good however difficult. May it bear fruit far beyond what we know and can see.
Thank you for your kind words. I am grateful for your comments and for the conversation here. May it continue to grow out there beyond the confines of the virtual world. I hope so.
Be well. -Jack
Yes, it is a farm in the foothills of the western mountains of Maine. The town is called Buckfield. We are making an offer but there is another offer also, so this is not a done deal. The chaos is our preparing our home for listing.
From what little I can tell from photos on the internet it looks like a beautiful place. Will you have land to be able to farm? Or micro-farm as they say?
we just visited on Monday. It is a small rural community and the land is beautiful around there. The particular home we are after has 24 acres of land.... less than some but a large part is very lush pasture with good soil. We have a lot to learn to make use of that amount. Pray for us as we do for you in this crazy stage of late capitalism.
I am praying and will continue to pray for you all. It is a crazy time no doubt. But that also means that something different is possible. A farm in Maine is good!
“(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?
John- Thank you for this substantive response. For the record I have no problem whatsoever such critiques. I welcome them. My hope for this little substack is to allow for exactly this type of conversation. So let 'em rip!
You are not alone in pushing back against what I am saying. This is similar to the kind of response Rod Dreher gets to his Benedict Option. Though he protests that this is unfair as it isn't what he saying (though what he is saying isn't always clear or consistent). But it is what I am saying, so your criticism is a fair one. I will probably have to defer responding to many of your points at the moment. Hopefully, this will be a continuing conversation. But I will respond on two fronts and see where that goes.
1) Yes there have always been issues with civilization and with oppression, etc. It is simple to point out times where it would have been far more chaotic than it is now, at least in physical terms than in the postmodern West. And similarly, there have always been those who, in lesser or greater numbers, have sought to flee this noise seeing it as toxic. So far, so good. My question is whether our technological civilization has now arrived at something quite new and different, i.e., no merely a matter of degree, but of kind. There is a continuity with our previous civilization, no doubt. But this may obscure from us the nature of what we are facing. This is a point that is, of course, open for debate.
It will come as no surprise that my answer is that, yes, we have so arrived. And that it doesn't look like it is going to slow down, to contrary, short of partial or total collapse. So the normal ways of seeking to leave the world of noise, distraction and ambition will also likely increase. In another sense, any civilization that doesn't not allow there to be an "outside" to it is one that is in trouble, and not only spiritually. My own sense, both intellectually and from direct experience is that much of our society has become toxic and that it has formed us in ways that make it almost immune from criticism. It may not surprise you, but I have hardly been afraid to voice my views on things. Just ask my coworkers. But it was shouting into the void, even for those who might be sympathetic to what I was saying. The gravity of the system, so to speak, was just to strong. It simply became chatter. Similarly, I have waiting in the church for years for a (quasi)prophetic sermon. For the most part, I have waited in vain. Even when in private it is acknowledged that there are some serious issues, little is said from the pulpit. I will leave it to others to say why.
2) How to respond? Though here I am having this discussion on substack and on the internet I am skeptical about the virtual world of rhetoric we have created and is creating us in return. I would love that there might be a St. John Chrysostom for our time. But where is he? Even if he's here, could his voice rise above the virtual noise and distraction or not just get absorbed into the sea of irrelevance the noise machine creates? I have my doubts whether or not he could. But I hope he shows up. I hope he is here.
I will offer instead what might be called the Seraphim of Sarov Option (so many options!) as a close cousin to the Arsenios Option but with a difference. I imagine you know his story. But I will offer this short video (8 min) that tells his story well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmDI5HTKgZQ&ab_channel=TrisagionFilms
In fact while I am at I will recommend the whole series, The Chronicles of the Desert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3SWV2LGPZ8&list=PL0AwxAWi5VQ3gHLr7oqFHfSKWS9l-LfvP&ab_channel=TrisagionFilms
St. Seraphim spent a long life in monasticism and finally in solitude out in the forests of Russia. This was neither an easy or quick training. It was only near the end of his life that he returned to Monastery and eventually made himself available. I think the "available hermit" notion is a way to not be closed off entirely from the world. He apparently had many visitors who sought his counsel. Many of whom were influential in the world. This may be a way forward.
Right now this period of silence for me is on a three month trial period. I may be back down into the valley of noise before very long. Three months is hardly enough time to scratch the surface of silence, yet it is something. Any time in silence is something I am grateful for. Be that as it may, I think it would be fruitful to find ways to create realms of silence--is schools of silence too much?--where those called to it in various ways can find it. And maybe from long training in silence a Chrysostom might emerge. Who knows?
I am very interested in not only speaking about silence, but more importantly from, and even *as* silence. I think that might have a deeper effect on people's hearts. That is my hope anyway.
My apologies for this long response. Thank you again. I hope you are well. -Jack
A quick question for now.
A difference in kind? I am tempted to ask how you would describe that ‘kind’? Are we to think that the world has changed to such an extent and at such a pace that the resulting ‘qualitative transformation’ exceeds the potential of the human mind to understand? This seems to me to be a difficult position to hold: if for no better reason than that it seems to hold as a given that there are limits to human sense-making that are not operative in all spheres of human activity.
This is not suggest that I have to be able to ‘understand’ everything I do in an absolute sense, but I do need to make sense of it sufficient for my own purposes, right? Put differently, I might say the an absence of consensus with respect to whether or not the world is going to hell in a hand cart does not demonstrate, necessarily that ‘human reason’ has arrived at its frontier.
Is it, perhaps, more in line with your position to claim that the ‘change in kind’ signals toward a more millenarianism kind of a thing? By which I mean, are we (for whatever set of causes) in a state of being, as a species, that exists in a liminal space twixt the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural’. So, the limits of human sense-making have been reached because they gaze upon the harbingers of Mystery?
I have more to say about this. But I need to do some thinking. Thanks for your patience, your open-ness , and your willingness to reflect. And, yes, I am pretty good, thanks. Doing so odd reading, at the moment. But that is another story. John.
PS in case I forget: next up, to what degree is 'silence' necessary to Christianity?
John- I don't think we are merely coming up against the limits of reason we are being presented with the strong possibility that the limits were there all along.
But if that is true how would I prove it to you or anyone. Is there anyway to slip outside the hermeneutic circle of rationality.
How do you decide between?:
1. We have hit the limits of reason.
2. We have not hit such limits.
3. Reason cannot detect any such limits.
4. Reason has detected these limits.
Take this guy for example, Daniel Schmactenberger in a (6 min) video entitled, "If We Don't Fix Sensemaking, We Won't Survive". I applaud his effort but is it even doable? My hunch is probably not. It is taking the problem of the foundations of reason i.e., "sensemaking" and at the same time avoid the hermeneutic circle. It seems to me he is just trying to construct a larger circle of circles within circles. As if adding more turtles to the infinite pile of turtles, one will find bedrock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya_p4RIorXw&ab_channel=RebelWisdom
Have you read McGilchrist? I find him interesting, but perhaps he runs up against the same problem. But I take the subtitle of his latest tome to be indicative of something important: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World.
But I cannot give a set of universal, indubitable propositions for what I am saying. I don't think anyone can, but that's not for me to decide. And maybe it's more a matter of this is where I get off from being on this particular ride. In the remaining time on the earth I seek something else. Something that is more local, more communal and has copious opportunities for silence. Which may or may not happen. I think that is what we are more fit for, though that has its problems too, obviously.
I don't really seek to convince anyone, only to offer the limited things I see. And to listen to what others see. It is what I can do. For what that is worth.
I will also meditate on this some more. Thank you for the discussion.
-Jack
We signed up for a six month tour of duty. But we stayed for two years. At that time there were two Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality in London. We spent our first six month in Dorothy Day House (DDH). Resting under the lip of a tumbling strip of housing project that ran the length, more or less, of the old East End’s northern edge, following as it did the trail provided by the Grand Union Canal, DDH was a three bed-roomed house that was home for five destitute refugees, each from a different country, and Mr & Mrs Hamblett. (As serendipity would have it, buried deeper in the same housing project, in a small flat on the 13th floor of a high-rise block, lived, prayed and entertained four nuns, Little Sisters of Jesus, an order in the de Foucauld family.)
In addition to being a crowded house, DDH was also the hub to which all food donations were delivered. With the aid of locals and supporters the food was freighted out to those in need on the estate, and to Peter’s Cafe. In addition to keeping DDH in order, Mr & Mrs Hamblett also ran Peter’s Cafe. The cafe was the public face of the London Catholic Worker in Hackney. It wasn’t really a cafe. It was more like a soup kitchen. Or, on some days, an arm’s length antechamber for the local psychiatric hospital. The fact that we had a menu with prices written on it notwithstanding, we gave away at least 90 per cent of everything we cooked. This apparent generosity can be explained by reference to the fact that at least 90 per cent of our ‘customers’ were street homeless self-medicators of one kind or another, and the neighbourhood booze shops and drug dealers had a stronger claim on their disposable income than Peter’s Cafe.
After six months of this colourful life in the East End, a decision was taken to close down DDH and Peter’s Cafe in order to concentrate resources and personnel at Giuseppe Conlon House (GCH), the Catholic Worker HQ in Haringay, north London. GCH comprised a de-commissioned Catholic Church, its church hall and presbytery. The community members lived in the presbytery, the church hall was used for public events, and the church hall was a night shelter providing an evening, a bed and breakfast for 30 male, destitute refugees every night of the year, but for a week at Christmas. We lived and worked there for something like 18 months. Then we returned to France.
Watching the movie on Dorothy’s life last night made something happen. Not an epiphany as such. This has something to do with it: After her death Fr Dan Berrigan wrote that Dorothy, “lived the Gospel as though it were true”. That is the mark of any saint. It is certainly the mark of St Ignatius Loyola, St Charles de Foucauld, and Servant of God Dorothy Day. The surface image of each of those lives demonstrates something of the diverse ways in which such a “living out” can appear. It may be the case that beneath that ‘surface’ the denominator common to each of these, and to all who comprise the communion of saints, is the praxis of silence.
Fr Voillaume does not think that to be the case. He writes that:
“Let me emphasise that there is but one thing that can bring about unity inside us, as also in our lives - and very specially between prayer and action - and that is love. Jesus’ command is that we love God and our fellow men up to death to ourselves. That is perfection. Perfection does not come automatically with any station in life, contemplative or not. It is not because one spends habitually long hours at prayer, or even because one embraces, say, the rule of the Carthusian monk or the Carmelite nun, that one will necessarily accomplish a work of perfection. Leading a contemplative life is not necessary to perfection as such, but love is, and always is. Even in the act of try contemplative prayer, it is well to remember those strong words of St Paul’s: ‘ I may speak with every tongue that men and angels use; yet if I lack charity, I am no better than echoing bronze or the clash of cymbals. I may have powers of prophecy, no secret hidden from me, no knowledge too deep for me; I may have utter faith so that I can move mountains; yet if I ,lack charity I count for nothing’ (iCor. 13:1-2).”
I would not wish you to imagine either (1) that I see ‘silence’ and ‘love’ as competing or conflicting aspects of Christian faith; or (2) that ‘silence’ is anything other than a necessary practice within a fully-rounded Christian prayer life. I would, however and without reserve, pin my colours to the mast that Fr Voillaume trims.
John-
Thank you for this. Yes, discussing the nature of human reason in the postmodern age is not unlike trying to play tag in a hall of mirrors. Fun for a little while, but quickly becomes pointless. But it also says a lot about where we have arrived. It is also, not incidentally, fundamental to what I am trying to express. Though it is usually more implicit.
But your latest comments are more fruitful for discussion. I appreciate all you have to say here. I have no basic disagreement with any of it.
I will indulge some general biography in response. I am an American Gen-x'er. My cultural inheritance could be described as suburbs, sitcoms and corn syrup. I say this with only the slightest touch of exaggeration. Little, if anything cultural was free from the machinations of corporations. Which certainly did not have our best interests at heart and was the opposite of a map for a good life. I asked my mother why there wasn't otherwise more guidance on how to live. She responded, tellingly, "we didn't know either" (she is silent generation). The blind raising the blind.
Overall, I have likened that time to living after a cultural neutron bomb had been dropped. It looked like the "Fifties" but much had already come largely untethered (to be honest, though I wasn't there, I doubt the Fifties was entirely "the Fifties"). Or rather the shell of institutions remained intact but the core had been hollowed out. Though in retrospect there was a lot left to still dismantle. A process that continues to this day.
There was no guidance at school, my parents were lost too, popular culture (which was neither truly "of the people" and less a culture and more of an anticulture) the sexual revolution, drugs and on and on. I went to college during the first "great awokening" of the late '80s early '90s. Thankfully, as a music student I was mostly immune from that, though not entirely if you wanted to get a date outside the music dept.
So here I am firmly ensconced in middle age, unmarried, no children I have been led to a time as a semi-hermit at a remote Benedictine Monastery and writing this substack. Neither of which I would have predicted even a year ago. Very strange.
I waited in vain in the Church for any guidance. Other than to "do the things" and not make a fuss. Let alone any prophetic witness to the nature of our times (there actually was some when attended a Latin Mass parish) and in some cases a near denial that anything was amiss. Which I found baffling.
Finally, and paradoxically, here in silence and stillness, *something is finally happening*!! Though it is difficult to say what, being in silence is changing me in ways I have longed for but could never otherwise find in the disaster of the culture.
The monastic community here is very small. Part of the ministry is a retreat house, but otherwise there are only 3 monks--and myself, for however long. I think a lot about scope and depth and how God is continually trying to deep and expand what we are capable of, resist though we might. But what an immense revolution it would be if we could learn to truly love the few people around us! This, at least for now, is my task and the extent of my scope.
All that said, I still believe that there is a calling to a life of silence, full stop. And that this too can be a way to serve our brothers and sisters. But that isn't fully it either. My belief is that we have arrived at something quite different. Some call it the meta-crisis, or convergence of catastrophes. Can I prove this? No. Have there been similar predictions that have failed to materialize? Yes. My sense of it, and it is just that, is not really Biblical, so much, but purely observational. I think that things have changed fundamentally and will continue to change in disturbing ways.
If I am speaking to anyone with this substack it is to those who have grown up in the anti-culture and with a lack of guidance and cultural stability. We need to find a way through this whatever the future brings.
Hopefully that wasn't *too* rambling. Thank you again for this conversation.
-Jack
Thanks. John
Finding myself in a debate concerning the ‘hermeneutic circle’ usually means I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere back down the road. Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa. So. Rewind. Take Two. Every morning Liz and I have a long litany to pray at the end of the Morning office, woven out of fibres from the community of saints. I haven’t checked with her but I think its OK to say that three of that community are of particular significance to the daily out-working of our Faith.
The first of these, not on the podium but in the order of the litany, is St Ignatius of Loyola. (ora pro nobis) A small man. Backwoods aristocrat by birth. Bad tempered and vain. By most accounts, a difficult man to get along with. The fact that he is one of the outstanding spiritual giants in the history of the faith is a point too obvious to elaborate. Two years ago, Liz and I made a more than memorable journey overland to Manresa in Catalonia. If you’re interested I could tell you about it, sometime. Anyway, there we made the 30 Day Exercises in the Jesuit Spirituality Centre that is built over the cave where Ignatius is said to have written the first draft of the Exercises in 1522.
Second up is St Charles de Foucauld. AKA Brother Charles of Jesus. (ora pro nobis) Born of filthy rich old school aristocrats in Strasbourg. Full name: Charles Eugene de Foucauld de Pontbriand. Died during the First World War as a the result of what was probably an accidental shooting while a bunch of Tuareg tribesman trashed his hermitage looking for guns he didn’t have. In between times, after quitting his posh Jesuit school, he had lived a dissolute playboy life while wearing the uniform of a cavalry officer in the French army. The army were smart enough to kick him out. After that he got interesting. Disguised as a Jewish scholar he travelled through Morocco; a country still, at that time, closed to westerners. This wasn’t a holiday it was an anthropological expedition. The Royal Society in Paris awarded him a Gold Medal for the ensuing book.
Entranced by the embodied faith of the Muslims he encountered on his trip, on his return to France he underwent his own conversion experience. First stop, L’Abbaye de Notre Dame de Nieges; a Trappist monastery in the mountains of the Ardeche. (During our French life, Liz and I made a week retreat there; it has a beautiful chapel dedicated to the Saint.) As austere a life as this was, Charles was looking for something that required a greater degree of self-emptying. In quick order, his journey downwards took him to a second Trappist house in Syria; a job as a handyman for the Poor Clares in Bethlehem, where he lived in their garden shed; and, finally into the Algerian desert, where he divided his time between living among the Tuareg in Tamanghasse; and Assekrem, the highest peak in the area where he built a retreat.
At some point on this story-line he gave away all his money. Outwardly, he busied himself writing the first Tuareg-French dictionary, and recording his neighbours’ folk tales. The locals, all muslims, referred to him as the ‘Holy Man’. Like St Francis of Assisi before him, Brother Charles counselled those who would be his followers to ‘preach' the Gospel through the example of the ‘hidden’ lives they lived as brothers and sisters to the poorest of the poor. Until the day he died, Brother Charles was convinced that God would send him others with whom he would build a Fraternity. But the only witness to his accidental demise was the sixteen year old boy who fired the rifle. Heck, he didn’t even make a single convert. Failure on a spectacular scale, eh?
Liz and I were members of the Lay Community that forms part of the world-wide ‘family’ of religious that, thanks largely to the formative work of Fr. Rene Voillaume, embody the vision of St Charles de Foucauld. When Pope Francis raised St Charles to the High Alter on 15 May 2022, he was just colouring in a public picture that the tens of thousands of devotees had carried in their hearts for a century. His ‘Prayer of Abandonment’ is the bridge between the formal close of our Morning Prayer and the prayer of the Litany of Saints. Guess, you never can tell with God.
Finally, Servant of God, Dorothy Day.(ora pro nobis) Every knee should bend at that name. It really is Dorothy’s fault that I am writing this. Last night Liz and I watched, Revolution of The Heart: The Dorothy Day Story. Now I am guessing that being an American kind of a chap you will require nothing of a biographical nature with respect to Dorothy. My route to Dorothy Day is a peculiar one. Something else I could tell you about depending on your degree of curiosity. Anyhow, Liz and I spent some time as community members of the London Catholic Worker. It happened like this.
During our time in France Liz found herself in the neurological intensive care unit at Limoges Hospital. During the five days she spent in that unit she came just about as close to death as a person can come and return to tell the tale. The rocky trail of set-back and recuperation found us, some months down the line, packing our bags for a trip to London. Just prior to our move out to France we had, as members of Contemplative Outreach UK, attended a retreat with Fr Thomas Keating on the Centring Prayer, which had become the heart of our spiritual practice by this time. And, it was time spent in silence, in our French house, that served to confirm our decision to enter the London Catholic Worker.
I will add one short coda to my already overlong response. In the silence here I feel the contradiction of silence and being on the internet. It isn't easy to resolve. Maybe it will become apparent over time. It isn't clear to me right now.
Honestly, if I had the means I might rather have a small community of silence. Somewhere away from things. I try to take a long view on all this. The response we are all groping for may actually be one that takes centuries to form. Assuming humans have that kind of time. I hope and think we do. Who knows?
I don't have the means so the gravitation of the valley of noise may pull me back in. We shall see. -Jack
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!
John- Whether long or short I look forward to hearing your thoughts. -Jack
I recommend hard labour. Soon.
I will take that under advisement.
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.
Camilla- Thank you for the gentle nudge and more importantly for the thoughtful comment. It is interesting how those of us who talked about these kind of issues in the past only received blank stares and awkward pauses. I know this well. It was as if simply relating what one saw was a social faux pas. And now, ironically. it is through technology that we are starting to get our message across.
Even still, I think it will take a few more shocks to the system--and a few more knocks to our heads--for us to really consider living differently than we have lived up to this point. Really, we should have been on this decades ago. But I have hope, though it is often a dark hope. We can continue and carry the fire of what is most valuable and deep and true about being a human being on this planet. We can start living as if on the "other side" of the catastrophe right now.
I believe it is as you say. Many more people now sense that something is "off" more or less. Our own mode of engaging the world, via our education system and upbringing etc., is unable--and in many ways unwilling--to fully confront what is going on around us and within us. We are literally disabled by our worldview. This needs to change. But you can now ask people--people who otherwise seem optimistic and adjusted to the way things are--what their gut tells them about how things are going. These same people tend to reveal that they don't think it is going well at all. There is a odd kind of hope in that too.
I have been thinking lately that we will have to face this metacrisis in a different way. It is our problem-solving that is the problem. We have turned the world, and our lives, into a problem to be solved, as if it were simple machine or equation and we just needed to crunch the numbers and do the math to figure it out. We live in a broken world, one that obscures the great mystery of being by turning everything into a function in a great machine.
So when I offer the Arsenios Option it is meant far more than just a way out physically speaking. It is also a way to engage the world in a completely different way. Silent contemplation is not just an adjunct to our utilitarian minds and goals, but its overthrow. It is turning things back upside down, which is actually right side up.
Enough from me.
Thank you for your comment. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you and everyone.
Be well. -Jack
Camilla- Obviously I didn't express myself well. I am certainly not accusing you of anything. Simply a general observation--one made far better and more comprehensively by Iain McGilchrist and others--that we have a civilization of technique and instrumental rationality. This has been very powerful in many ways that has allowed for the "triumph of the West", economically, politically, militarily etc.
This has also been at the root, as I see it, of our current crisis. And will likely be our and everyone's undoing. Yet, we--as a civilization--keep thinking we can use the same technical processes that got us into the mess to get us out, i.e., that the world is a dead system that can be engineered to our liking without consequence. This not only fails to extricate us but seems only to ensnare us further.
Again, following McGilchrist, I therefore see the need to find a different new/old way of being in the world. The need to understand ourselves and our relation to the world in a deeper, more comprehensive and very different way than what has gotten us here. A way other than what has been dominant for quite some time. I am a nobody trying to add my small understanding to this movement. That's all.
I don't know if that does any better. I hope it does.
And I hope you are well. -Jack
Camilla- My apologies! Somehow I missed the alert for your comment. I am now off for the noon day meal. But I will respond shortly. Be well -Jack