Funny thing about the spiritual discipline of silence. The more we say about it, the less we have of it. But here I go anyway, creating sentences and paragraphs to talk about the lack of them.

Some years back I started to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of words coming at me. And I think I have a high tolerance for words, having worked as a librarian and as a preacher of the Word. There was something else going on. This coincided with what I see now was a bend in the trail of my spiritual pilgrimage.

I have pretty much always tended to the quiet side of life. But I’ve also slowly been shedding much of the external noise in my life. We don’t have a television. We don’t constantly stream shows online. There is no radio always playing in the background. Or in the car. I have no earbuds. I no longer commute 25 miles one way in city traffic (or, actually, any distance at all), and stopped downloading podcasts while I was still making those daily drives. Quieting all that external noise was the easiest part.

Another level of the walk into spiritual silence comes by silencing the social media that invade our lives and that we eagerly, and perhaps mindlessly, consume. These applications are craftily designed to draw us back in again and again. It takes an effort of the will to wean away from them. Sometimes it takes deleting the apps altogether. A the very least they need to be cordoned off so they don’t invade the life spaces you want to protect. This work is harder than the first.

But hardest of all, and in the end perhaps the most promising, is quieting the internal noise. Some people, I’ve read, don’t have much of an internal dialog constantly running in their heads. Perhaps they subsist on the “earworm” sounds of pop songs, commercial jingles, and repetitive thoughts or ruminations. I’m not one of those people. My mental space has been swept clear of much of those songs and jingles through turning off the tv and radio. What I contend with are snippets of conversations that I have had, or might have, or could yet had; or paragraphs that could end up as the written word somewhere (I’ve written and re-written whole sermons in my head while out walking). Bringing these internally-cultivated words to heel is the hard but necessary work of the spiritual discipline of silence.

Why is it necessary?

To leave space for God to enter into conversation with us.

Much, way too much, of prayer can be described as simply asking for stuff. Prayers for healing. Prayers for comfort while mourning. Prayers that violence in our streets will end. Prayers that people no longer suffer. Prayers for a job. Prayers for food and clean water. Prayers for reconciliation. All prayers asking for something.

True, Jesus himself told us “Ask and it will be given to you” (Matt. 7:7) and St. Paul urged us to “Let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:7). We need to ask. If only to clarify in our own hearts what it is we are seeking, it helps to put it into words, to spell it out. It helps to get specific. And that means working through ‘what I am really asking for.’

But we also need to listen for an answer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in 1939 that

“The silence of the Christian is listening silence, humble stillness, that may be interrupted at any time for the sake of humility. It is silence in conjunction with the Word. … There is a wonderful power of clarification, purification, and concentration upon the essential thing in being quiet. This is true as a purely secular fact. But silence before the Word leads to right hearing and thus also to right speaking of the Word of God at the right time. Much that is unnecessary remains unsaid. But the essential and the helpful thing can be said in a few words.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, p. 80)

Thus spiritual silence is silence with a purpose. We don’t listen for many words. We listen for the Word. And in hearing what the Word has to say directly to each of us at this moment in this place, we can know what to say and do. Because the Word of God has something to say to us as individuals (both the living Word and the printed Word). And because the Word of God gives each of us something to say to others.

The external disciplines of silence, again, are the easy part. Turn off the devices, unplug the gear, go for a walk without your tunes playing in your ears, avoid even conversations. At least for a short space each day, for a half an hour. Or longer if you can.

The harder work is seeking the internal silence that gives our God who so often speaks to his children in a “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12) his chance to get a word in edgewise. Just sit with God for a while. Maybe imagine you’re on a porch swing together, just silently watching fireflies rise up out of the grass at the end of a long summer day. Then stop imagining the lawn and the fireflies. And just sit together. In silence.

Yes, sometimes the Lord does call to us in thunder and loud brass instruments (Ex. 19:16). He grabs our attention away from ourselves. He shakes us up and wakes us up. But that really isn’t his voice for the day-to-day. Think about how parents will holler loudly to catch their child’s attention from the other side of a playground. But then think about how a loving parent will not holler and shout at close range and indoors. God does holler at us sometimes to get our attention. But he usually uses his ‘indoor voice’ with us. Especially when we are close by. And we want to be close by to God.

Sitting with God in silence – often, regularly, literally – is a spiritual discipline that clears the way for the Word of God in our lives.