The Power of Silence

I have this picture hanging on the wall in my office. I can't tell you how many people comment on it. That may be because of the profound wisdom it expresses. Or it may be because of the irony of it hanging in MY office. Silence isn't really my strong suit. But I'm working on it.

I'm building a new habit. I've started spending the first hour of the morning in silence, gliding gently in my rocker, Sophie purring in my lap. The screens and devices stay dark until that hour is up. I won't share too much of what I'm doing. Meditation is a pretty new thing for me, and I want to resist the desire to act like an overnight expert.

I don't know if I'm "doing it right," or if there even is such a thing. I suppose a teacher or mentor or spiritual guide might help direct me, or at least reassure me, but for now I'm learning from the books and instruction I can get online or in the library. Maybe I'll seek out a guru once I can do that crazy crossed legs thing on the floor.

I have practicing this morning silence for about three weeks. I started around the time I decided to quit fretting about my health and get on with life instead. It has brought me a couple of surprises.

I've noticed that on the days I start with silence, my life is more disciplined. I don't miss as many workouts. I'm on time a little more, (not too much - I have to protect my brand, you know.)  I am not getting as tired in the afternoons, in spite of the fact that I'm skipping the snooze button, getting dressed, and starting the day an hour earlier. I don't know what the relationship is between all these benefits and my new, silent habit, but I like it.

Something else has begun happening, too. I haven't talked about this very much, or maybe I have, but God and I have not been getting along very well for some time. A couple of years, actually. Losing so many people during the pandemic, having the woman I once hoped would be my wife suffer and die alone with cancer and covid, and finally watching them lower my mother into the ground on a foggy mountain in Pennsylvania left me feeling betrayed and abandoned by a God who did not behave like the fellow I always thought he was. 

I did not stop believing he was there. I might as well deny the reality of air or sunlight. But my trust was gone. I stopped believing in a person, a father, abba,  who watched and cared and looked out for his children. Instead, I saw indifference to suffering that too often seemed like cruelty. My prayers stopped. My Bible gathered dust. What used to be long conversations with God became snorts of anger and distain for a Creator who let his creation go so wrong. 

But in the silence something is changing. I won't call it redemption, or even truce, but in my quiet observation of myself and the world around me, I'm realizing that I am not angry at God for who he is - I am angry at him for not being who I thought he was, who I wanted him to be.

Part of the practice of meditation, as I understand it, is detachment. Siddhartha Gautama, the man they call the Buddha believed that suffering comes from desire, our thirst for things we don't have: things that are not ours to possess. A couple hundred years later, Jesus seemed to agree with him. At least that's the impression I have so far. I've barely gotten a sniff of whatever the B-man is cooking. He taught that freeing ourselves from desire would free us from life's cycle of suffering. 

I wonder if he was right? I wonder if what seems like God's indifference is really detachment from the desire to fix something that doesn't belong to him. If God really gave us the right to choose, then the consequences of our choices belong to us, too. I think that's a glimmer of what they call Karma. They are not God's consequences to take away - they are ours to live with,  and to someday release. Like maybe being "born again?"

This gets real problematic and weird. That's probably because I've spent less than a month considering things that people spend their whole lives contemplating. I'm a little lost in the weeds of my own ignorance right now. But somewhere down the path, it seems to me that forgiveness is waiting. For myself. For God. For... I don't know... for all the people and things that didn't turn out to be what I thought or wished they were. 

Detachment from the sound of angry sadness rattling around in my heart. That's a silence I would like to hear.

And somewhere a little further down that path, there is action: the quiet work of loving a world that can't help but hurt itself.

At least that's what I think today. Time to stop typing. I'm still a long way from the wisdom that comes from "saying nothing."