Making Silence Your Friend

Imagine this for a second. You’re sitting with a dear friend over dinner, you may not have seen them in a long time but it’s one of those friendships where time and distances doesn’t affect your friendship. Think of that person, and a special place you would like to meet.

You’re very excited to see them, anxious to catch up and share stories. Being polite you let them share first and you find yourself listening all about their life. Something they say strikes you and you’re interested, so you try and elaborate on certain aspects going on with their life.

But before you can even get a word, they butt in a switch topic taking a complete tangent into a different topic about what crazy adventures they’ve been on recently.

Staying in tune you try and catch this detour and try to intently speak more on the topic about their adventure, but wait they get off on another tangent, butting in once again before you can get a word in to speak now about their problems.

Not to be rude you patiently listen as they are speaking on and on about their life. Finally, you see them take a breath “at last!” you think “finally we can pause for a moment and go deeper into a topic”. But just as you’re about to speak your friend turns the turbo propeller into full blast, refreshed from their breath, and they are off again into another aspect of their life faster than Usain Bolt can run 100m.

Patiently you wait for your time to speak, and actually converse with your friend, but before you know it time is up and your friend really has to rush off because of a prior commitment. Before they go they say an innocent but brash comment like “I wish I could get some pointers from you, but it seems like you don’t really speak much anymore? Either way, nice seeing you, see you again next week maybe? Okay bye!”

Shesh… talk about whirlwind talk-o-holic. Be honest, we all know too well that guy ‘Mr Talk-Too-Much’.

But I’m guilty of this when I see my friends, and I feel like this is how some of you readers may act too. There’s a lot of “me me me” talk and restlessness brought into conversations to get our points or stories across and less attention diverted to those in front of us, and who’s to blame we live in a constructed me first society.

But I also feel this doesn’t just happen with our friends, it also occurs when we meet Christ. We take the “me me me” aspect of conversation into our prayers and forget to stop and listen to what our friend Jesus has to say. Rather we bombard Him with a lot of requests, demands… and just noise quite frankly. Then we have the audacity to say things like “I can’t hear You God” “Send me a sign” “Talk to me Lord…”.

St Teresa of Calcutta said “I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. God is the friend of silence – we need to listen to God because it’s not what we say but what he says to us and through us that matters.”

Being one to fall into the trap of ‘me me me’ syndrome in prayer and grown in frustrations of ‘not getting answers’ in my prayers, a very dear friend of mine said “maybe you should try silence? Because in the silence is when God speaks.”

Now I must admit, silence is an odd thing for me personally. It can be awkward, lovely, calming, deafening, eerie, and serene just to name a few. But one thing I’ve come to know recently is that silence is revealing.

Being silent in prayer was so very foreign to me, I felt like I was wasting both my time and Gods time by not saying anything. But that’s precisely the reason why I’ve grown fond of it. The silence is loud, uncomfortable and reveals just how restless my soul is, the uneasiness I feel in just being in the presence of God to just be there with him.

St Faustina said “A talkative soul lacks both the essential virtues and intimacy with God. A deeper interior life, one of gentle peace and of that silence where the Lord dwells, is quite out of the questions. A soul that has never tasted the sweetness of inner silence is a restless spirit which disturbs the silence of others.”

Being in silence for me is a challenge to go into deeper devotion to God.

To be able to rest in Him and be at peace in the stillness of the moment. I see it as an act of faith to trust the silence, and in extension, to trust that God will hear my deepest prayers in the silence of my heart without me having to say a word. It kind of feels like a tug-of-war match between feelings of me and not really me. Between what I’m use to with the formal wording and asking for things verbally to God and making requests, and to what I ought to do, which is to be still even for a moment, silent even for just a second, and trust deeply that He will know my deepest true self.

To trust that in this silence God will speak loudest.

Personally, praying in silence is a humbling experience. It’s humble in itself and humbling to the recipient because it exposes and opens up the doors to a momentary revelation of your deepest self, as it allows you to let go of perceived notions of prayer where we have to have always a constructed set of words and sentences, and enables you to enter into a deeper state where you can just adore, bask, and be in His presence.

But as much as I’m struggling with it, I feel the fruits are growing as I practise this form of prayer as often as I can. Not always do I have to say a formal prayer, sometimes my prayers will involve me kneeling in adoration and just saying “G’day, hope you’ve been well” where I stop and just recognise the moment for what it is, then just be. No words. No expectations for answers. No bombarding. Just happy to be able to share time with Him.

Comfortable silence.

So if you’re new to this type of prayer, give it a try, you don’t have to say much. After all Jesus is your friend, and as much as you want to tell him every update in the world of you, it pays to listen.

REFLECT

1. Am I a friend that talks more or listens more?
2. Do I have trouble making space for silence in my life, or is it easy for me? Why?
3. Will I make time today to begin prayer in silence and be comfortable in the silent presence of my friend, Jesus?

By day, Bernard is an exercise physiologist and by night, he’s a laksa enthusiast. He enjoys paying money to lift and push things, hearty laughter, good beer, and secretly likes pineapple on his pizza. A wannabe adventure man, he finds himself closest to God in the mountains.