Week Two: Prayer and Silence
In chapter two of With Open Hands, Henri Nouwen says we know there is a connection between prayer and silence. He talks about two challenges in our search for silence: quieting the outside world and quieting our inner world. “To be calm and quiet your yourself . . . offers the freedom to stroll through your own inner yard and to rake up the leaves and clear the paths so you can easily find the way to your heart.” (page 39). What does your ‘inner yard’ look like?
Do you, as Henri ponders, create diversions in your outside world to avoid a confrontation with what is inside? How can we minimize the diversions and find the peace of silence that brings us back to the One who is leading us?
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March 14th, 2009 @ 9:03 am
I like this timeless book and love your honest-insightful comments! We have a prayer room at our church and it’s there for people who want to go and pray at different scheduled times. My time is on Wednesdays at 6:00 am for an hour. This past September, I volunteered for something that conflicted with my prayer time thinking that I could move my time up an hour, but one thing led to another and it hasn’t worked.
Even though I pray almost every day, the habit and discipline of an appointment or set time with God is hard to get back once lost. There are many other times that I can go to our prayer room or somewhere else to pray during the week, but the noise and busyness has gotten me into a routine of procrastination.
Jesus went away to pray as well as commanding the disciples to pray when the pressures of the world (temptation) were closing in on them.
(Lk 22:40,Mk14:32,Mt,26:36). I have fallen into the trap of thinking that I am in control instead of praying for the direction of God’s will for my life as well as those around me. Missing the silence and calmness that comes from my time alone with God.
My focus for Lent is to listen and in order for that to happen, I will have to make more times and appointments to be alone with God! Thanks for your help and encouragement…I promise that you’re in my prayers.
March 7th, 2009 @ 7:09 pm
This week’s reading has corresponded with two events: the anniversary of my mother’s death and a breath of spring here in St. Louis. My mother, an avid gardener, shared her passion and avocation with me. Today we uncovered those plants that have been “quiet” since fall. Their silence over the winter months provides them with the strength to spring forth and blossom in the spring and summer. We too must embrace our needs for silence and rest - to look inward and reflect. I sought out this discussion group for precisely that reason: to provide myself with some silent retreat time. An introvert in an extrovert’s job, I find that the demands of my job tax me personally - so many requests, so many needs. So when I return to my two teenagers in the evening, I find that I have little left…However, if I have had time to run…or to reflect… I feel as though my garden has been tended and I can help with the “weeding” in my children’s garden.
Remember that saying? Silence is golden. Truly it is. It provides us with the time to breathe deeply… to listen carefully … silence is a gift that allows us to turn inward.
A little side note: with the warm weather yesterday, the house became stuffy so we opened the bedroom window overnight. The quiet sounds of the night were wonderful… until 3:00 a.m. when the birds began their songs in the tree outside my window. Didn’t know that the birds were up that soon!
March 7th, 2009 @ 11:24 am
Good morning all:
Love this chapter. While reading I was thinking of a Native American friend of mine who would often comment with dismay on what he called “white man’s noise”. I understood immediately what he meant: the seemingly endless amount of noise all around us in our everyday lives…..the boom boxes, I-pods, radios, televisions, leaf blowers (“try raking” he would lament!), car horns, and most of all, the constant chatter of people who really have nothing to say but just need to hear the sounds of their own voices. He would actually become weary from all the noise. I think Henri-and all of you-have diagnosed this perfectly…we are all just afraid to be silent because then we would have to examine ourselves and our lives and perhaps face some things that are so terribly painful. That certainly has been true for me in my life in the past. Mercifully, God has gently led to me a place where I welcome and embrace silence and although it can indeed be painful at times, it is ultimately a place of healing and peace.
I love the prayer at the end of this chapter. “Dear God, speak gently in my silence”. I believe that God will always honor that prayer.
Debbie…I totally understood what you shared-thank you for your insight. I also make it a point to go on silent retreats. In fact I am going next month to the Benedictine monastery that I have called my “refuge from the noise”. During my times there God has never failed to speak to the desires and longings of my heart and I come back determined, once again, to meet with Him daily (amidst all the noise and distractions of my life) in that inner, quiet space within me.
Joe, I will be offering up all those distractions as you suggest…there are so many!! I am a wife, mother, and teacher of 130 adolescent 7th graders….the distractions are ever with me and I love the idea of simply offering them up to God. He knows me so well and what is going on with my life! I am comforted by your idea of offering my distracting thoughts (Henri called them “chattering monkeys” in another book) to Him as a gift. That leaves me open to accepting His unconditional love and tender mercies.
The sun is out, the birds are chirping and the air is (finally!) warm here in North Jersey.
Peace to you all
Diane
March 7th, 2009 @ 8:32 am
Chistine, you are most welcome here, I assure you! I find that spending even 5 seconds every so often to look at a cloud, a dead branch, a pool of water, a single leaf on a plant or on the ground — brings me to a different place inside. Another writer, Annie Dillard, wrote: Silence is nature’s one remark — in her essay “Teaching a Stone to Talk.” Experiencing these 5 seconds helps me to understand what I AM NOT EXPERIENCING and what I am missing most of the other minutes of every day.
March 6th, 2009 @ 4:56 pm
Hi everyone,
I just got Henri Nouwen’s book 2 days ago, and I hope you don’t mind if I join your discussion group a bit late! This is the first Henri Nouwen book I’ve picked up, and so far, I think it’s incredibly insightful.
I think our society is generally scared of silence. I see this when waiting in line, or on the bus - everyone is talking on a cell phone, blackberry, etc. I think people busy themselves like this because they can’t stand the thought of spending a few minutes “alone” with themselves.
I don’t mind spending time in solitude, but I am forever bombarded with various distractions. It’s as if my brain has been ‘on the go’ for so long that it doesn’t know what else to do (thank you Joe, for your insight concerning distractions).
I feel most connected to God when I’m in nature. One day, while hiking, I understood what “the deafening sound of silence” meant. When there are no sounds at all, it really can give you an odd feeling of being deafened by the silence. I wonder if I would have a similarly scary feeling if I finally managed to quiet my mind and hear nothing but silence?
Christine
March 6th, 2009 @ 11:29 am
Hi all,
I am looking at this chapter as one who has just returned from making a three day silent retreat. I try to make such retreats quarterly, so that I have focused times of cultivating inner silence. By going away to a hermitage in the woods, the outer silence is there: no internet, no cell signal, etc.–just me and God and creation. Then, it’s through listening to all the inner noise that I can allow the Spirit to create a space for peace within me. Through times of prayer, reflective reading, walks in creation, I am helped to address the fears (the future) and the painful wounds (the past) that are my inner noise. It’s the yard work of raking leaves, picking up branches, pulling weeds that Henri talks about on p. 39.
I think two things are key:
1. I don’t get anywhere by just trying to ignore the inner noise. It has to be addressed so I can have inner silence.
2. Becoming familiar with my inner self–being able to distinguish a weed from a rose–is necessary, and it takes experience. I am learning to tell my weeds from roses because I try to visit my inner “garden” frequently.
Bringing the inner silence home with me isn’t always easy! However, it does happen because I’ve done the inner cleaning. My prayer times at home come easier, too. Of course, new weeds grow and more branches come down in life’s storms. That’s why I’ve needed to build retreat times into my life.
I hope all this makes sense–I know what I mean, but it’s very hard to put it into words.
Peace–Deborah
March 6th, 2009 @ 7:09 am
There is much here that makes me think. But on page 39 “Perhaps there will be fear and uncertainty when you first come upon this “unfamiliar terrain,” but slowly and surely you will discover an order and a familiarity which deepens your longing to stay at home with yourself.” For me, I feel trouble embracing silence because of lack of trust that, in fact, in the silence there will be order and there will be familiarity. Chaos and strangerness is really most of all what I expect. But, the clue that this is something that needs to be better resolved is that I am uncomfortable also with other people’s silences. How much is individualism, privacy, how high are the barriers to genuine Christian fellowship and intimacy, how close is the order and familiarity in others’ silences? Looking forward to reading the rest of the book and the blog and gaining greater insight into praying and peace, within and with others.
March 5th, 2009 @ 11:14 pm
many times my inner noise is stilled by the writing of Nouwen. And I feel GOD’S loving Hands on me.
March 5th, 2009 @ 10:50 am
I find that gently letting go of the distractions that come in prayer and mindful living without berating self of losing patience is one way of finding silence and being comfortable with it in daily living. Letting God take care of the past and future while living in the now has given me a calmness I never had before. And knowing that it is a daily process in renewing that confidence in God’s care adds to the peace. God’s blessings to all His creation today.
March 4th, 2009 @ 9:59 am
I think we all create diversions in the outside world to avoid true confrontation with what is inside, largely because what is inside is what we have hidden away from the world and from ourselves for the precise reason that we do not want to confront it.
Like Henri says, the challenge is to find a way to minimize those diversions and seek to find Jesus in the innermost part of our being, that place where we have hidden away all that we are afraid to see.
While I cannot recall where, in another place, Henri talks about quieting one’s self for prayer, and he offers a solution to the constant distractions. Often we are tempted to berate ourselves for falling prey to the wandering mind that plagues our attempts at meaningful silence, to tell ourselves that we will never get it, that we just aren’t “holy” or “spiritual” enough to get past those distractions. Such an approach is not helpful and will merely add more leaves to the clutter of our inner yard. Instead, we should offer each of the distractions to God as a gift. So, if as we are sitting in silence we find our minds wandering to all the things we have to get done this day, we breathe a quick prayer offering that concern to God.
Our first attempts at this will likely feel like they are thwarting any attempts at true silence, as I found by my own experience that I spent many “silent” moments merely running through a list of distractions that needed to be given to God. The hope in this, though, is that we will eventually reach the point where we have set aside all our distractions and can meet with Jesus in the clear space of our heart.