c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Last week, on a noisy corner in a busy city, I led a retreat titled, “Pathways to a Deeper Faith.”

At the risk of seeming absurd, I wanted this retreat to find its center in silence.

We had no woodland trails, serene ponds or quiet corners in a lodge. Nothing about Midtown Manhattan is quiet. Street noise would find us.

So would the noise we carry within us. Modern life is a churning and stressful affair. Church life tends to focus on talk and activity. An interlude with no music, words or movement might seem a mistake. For many, the primary payoff for attending a church event is the opportunity to talk.

I knew that I would frustrate some at the retreat by ending each teaching with 30 minutes of silence and by asking them to eat lunch in silence. When I first encountered that ancient monastic practice, I loathed it.

I also knew that some would be mystified by the “quiet stations” that our seminarian intern set up. What use is an icon, an array of pebbles or sprigs of rosemary flanked by candles?

We start where we start. I am committed to bringing “best practices” to church life. Those best practices include effective methods for such critical work as responding to Sunday visitors, training leaders and deploying technology in communications.

Silence isn’t an escape from best practices, but is itself a best practice. When Jesus went apart to pray in silence, he wasn’t escaping his broken world. He was preparing himself to serve in it. He was talking with God. Without that communion with the divine, he had little to offer.

I think faith communities need to engage in “radical listening.” We talk too much. We need to listen to God, an imprecise venture that can feel both futile and frightening. We need to listen to our inner beings, as the yearnings and uncertainties of our hearts burst through the barricade of propriety and self-defense. We need to listen to each other and to the world around us, a frustrating venture that exposes us to all manner of strangeness.

Silence isn’t a technique, although I suppose there are useful techniques for entering into silence, such as icons, pebbles and candles. Silence is a bold and humble step toward God. It’s bold because the new land discovered in silence can be chastening, even terrifying. It’s humbling because self-emptying must occur, as must respect for people being silent around us.

Entering into silence requires obedience to the “11th Commandment,” namely, “Thou shalt zip it.” Stop talking. Stop filling the air with words or actions. Let your soul wait in silence. Let your mind roam freely beyond schedule and duty. Let your heart break. Let your hands turn palms up, emptied of keyboard, tool or weapon.

Some on this retreat would mutter, “I came here for instruction, not silence,” or, “I need to talk, not to listen.” I just knew that my words of teaching would serve best if they were invitations to silence. And what we came wanting to say would nourish less than the manna God would give.

If individuals need silence, imagine how much our warring congregations and denominations need silence. After 2,000 years of hubris and combat, we have virtually nothing new to say. It is time for us to put down our dogma and certainty and to engage in radical listening.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

KRE DS END EHRICH600 words

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