Posted on by Kurt Bodling

stresses of silent retreats

Note:
A little longer quote for today: Some people hunger for silence and solitude, at least in theory. The Franciscan monastery in Washington, DC offers an opportunity to try it out a day at a time in a small purpose-built hermitage in 4 wooded acres on their city property. It doesn’t always play out as hoped. This gives one some things to think about if you find yourself imagining how great it would be to ‘get away from it all’ for a while. The source profiles 2 women who did short personal silent retreats, and summarizes their difficulties. Some extracts follow:

Quote:
“What do we complain about more these days than the tyranny of constant stimulation? Our attempts to tune out the outside world — the occasional radio-less drive to work, the concerted decision to leave the phone at home for a few hours — are often ineffectual. It has come to this: True solitude is such a rarity in our modern lives that we have to buy it — or, in this case, rent it for $70 a night.

“But it turns out solitude isn’t that simple. Although participation in silent retreats is on the rise, many of those preparing to spend time at the hermitage said they were so unaccustomed to unstructured time alone that they made to-do lists — then feared they were doing “solitude” wrong and scrapped them.

“What is silence? The absence of noise? Achieving inner peace? Knowing yourself? Being able to hover above your own thoughts and observe them without judgment? Halting the constant hunger for accomplishment in a society absorbed with getting ahead in measurable ways, with doing rather than being?

“Silence isn’t the end; it’s the means, experts say. And its absence from our culture isn’t a small thing.

“The challenges posed by silence are well-known to those who study and teach it. Some retreats encourage people to train — to refrain from checking their BlackBerrys for a few hours at a time before coming, for example. Others ease people into silence over a couple of days instead of all at once.”

Source: Boorstein, Michelle. “Silent retreats’ rising popularity poses a challenge: How to handle the quiet.” Washington Post 12 December 2012

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

praying and mulling over the Psalms

Note: The reason we spend so much time praying with the Psalms is that their broad range of content and expression touch all our needs. It could be that we feel one thing when the appointed Psalm goes somewhere else, but that just indicates (I think) our need for broader and deeper familiarity with them so that we can recall and pray the verses that do, at that moment, speak our heart.

Quote:
“And with that gospel, it is very important during our periods of silence and personal prayer to repeat some psalms that we have prayed in the Liturgy of Hours. Why the psalms? I can find myself in the psalms. Through the psalms I can praise God with trust and hope, but I can also give free rein to my darker thoughts that might otherwise lie in wait within my heart. Above all, the psalms sing my own thirst for God, the joys and sufferings of my search for God. The psalms are a support for our prayer and lectio divina.” (p. 55)

Source: Barban, Alessandro. “Lectio Divina and Monastic Theology in Camaldolese Life” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Apophatic Theology and True Theologians

“In accord with the ecstatic and negative theology, by means of which God is praised in a way beyond expression and by being silent because of the amazement and wonder induced by His majesty, so that now the worshiper feels that not only every word is less than His praise, but also that every thought is inferior to His praise. This is the true Cabala, which is extremely rare. For as the affirmative way concerning God is imperfect, both in understanding and in speaking, so the negative way is altogether perfect. … Therefore our theologians are too rash when they argue and make assertions so boldly about matters divine. For, as I have said, the affirmative theology is like milk to wine in relation to the negative theology. This cannot be treated in a disputation and with much speaking, but must be done in the supreme repose of the mind and in silence, as in rapture and ecstasy. This is what makes a true theologian. But no university crowns anyone like this, only the Holy Spirit. And whoever has seen this, sees how all affirmative theology knows nothing. But this matter perhaps experiences more things than modesty.”

Luther, Martin. On Psalm 65:1. In “First Lectures on Psalms, I” Luther’s Works, American edition. Volume 10. St. Louis: Concordia, 1974, p. 313. [lectures delivered in 1513-1515]

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signs of the times, the end times

“We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration. ….

“As the end approaches, there is no room for nature. The cities crowd it off the face of the earth.

“As the end approaches, there is no room for quiet. There is no room for solitude. There is no room for thought. There is no room for attention, for the awareness of our state.

“In the time of the end, there is no room for man.” (pp. 280-281)

Merton, Thomas. “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room.” (1965) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), pages 280-281.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

requirements for clear thinking

“Where there is no critical perspective, no detached observation, no time to ask the pertinent questions, how can one avoid being deluded and confused? Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought.”

Merton, Thomas. “Events and Pseudo-Events Letter to a Southern Churchman.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), page 300.

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ascetic silence

“Exterior silence is an ascetic exercise of self-mastery in the use of speech. …

“Asceticism is a means that helps us to remove from our life anything that weighs it down, in other words, whatever hampers our spiritual life and, therefore, is an obstacle to prayer. Yes, it is indeed in prayer that God communicates his Life to us and manifests his presence in our soul by irrigating it with the streams of his trinitarian love. And prayer is essentially silence. Chattering, the tendency to externalize all the treasures of the soul by expressing them, is supremely harmful to the spiritual life. Carried away toward the exterior by his need to say everything, the chatterer cannot help being far from God, superficial, and incapable of any profound activity.”

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), pages 141-142.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

holy anticipation

“Silence and solitude are a small anticipation of eternity, when we will be in God’s presence permanently, irradiated by him, the great Silent One, because he is the great lover.”

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), page 70.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

action comes IN contemplation

“Silence is not a form of passivity. By remaining silent, man can avoid a greater evil. It is not an earthly dereliction of duty to place your trust in heaven.”


Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), p. 151.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

good nutrition for the soul

“The deeper spiritual life calls us to external and interior silence and solitude that open us to the real abundant life of God. They call us to deny the false nourishment of egotistic junk food and to seek out real spiritual food. This means sometimes cutting ourselves off from the sugar-coated food of the secular world in order to find the real meat of the gospel. The sugar might seem to taste better, but it will kill us when eaten exclusively or to excess.”


Talbot, John Michael. The World is My Cloister: Living From the Hermit Within. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010), page 116.

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and a time to every purpose

“For there is a time to fight and a time to make use of silence. If we truly possess the pedagogy of silence that comes from God, we will have a little of heaven’s patience.”


Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), page 154.