On Learning to be Quiet

Last updated on: August 13, 2015 at 1:02 pm by Jeremy Neill

On Learning to be Quiet 2015-08-13T13:02:07-06:00 Jeremy Neill

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I am going just to come out and say it, to get it over with. You cannot hope to live a successful Christian life if you do not learn to be quiet. Spiritual sustenance is mainlined into us through moments of silence and meditation, and not through the bustle of a life of media devices. When was the last time you tried to be silent, to do nothing, to calm your mind and, in the absence of any external media stimuli, just to experience the stillness of being alive? For me this experience is all too rare these days, with the constant stresses of my job and my family obligations. The kind of stillness that I am referencing is all but incompatible with audio, video, or digital electronics. Sometimes I poll my students, asking them how many hours a day they are away from their media devices. Many of them estimate that they spend between twelve and fourteen hours a day on their devices, so this sort of stillness is wholly foreign to their experiences.

Cowboy at Prayer, Wikimedia Commons, Billy Hathorn

But the great saints of the Bible were all comfortable with the silences of life. Moses regularly withdrew to be alone in the mountains with God. David likewise seems to have cultivated a capacity for quiet meditation. In the New Testament we read of the Apostle Paul journeying to Arabia, an arid and silent desert. Jesus regularly withdrew in order to pray. In fact the ubiquity of the times of silence in the lives of the saints has led me to conclude over the years that silence is a necessary condition for a successful Christian life. Let me say that again. Without times of quiet in our lives – times when we are separated entirely from media stimuli – we cannot hope to experience a fulfilling religious path.

But in my own life I have found that I often am afraid of silence. In the absence of stimulation of some sort – through my iPad, my iPhone, or some other source – I grow anxious and even irritable. It feels as though I do not know what to do with myself when I am not getting my entertainment from an outside source. After many years of habituation into the always-on electronic culture, I have had in the last few months to dial back some very deeply-ingrained tendencies in my own life, in order to learn the discipline of silence. At least for me, the never-ending media merry-go-round is incompatible with a life of spiritual sustenance.

For different people, silence might mean different things. For some it might mean going cold turkey, unhooking oneself and turning off the devices altogether for a period of time. For others it might mean simply scheduling regular intervals away from the glitz and glamour of those devices. For me it has meant time outside, in the natural world, where I can enjoy God’s creation via a front-row seat. During some of these times I talk to God through prayer, but during many others I just enjoy nature. The means may vary, but the point is the same: silence is golden when it comes to a life of spiritual obedience.

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