Silence enables us to see the sacredness of all life…"to see life steady and to see it whole." In an age that has lost all sense of the sacred, of awe and wonder at the Divine penetration throughout the physical, human plane, how much we need the recovery of silence. Without some sense of awe, there is little basis for meaning.
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.
We are held in a great light,
larger, more gracious than us.
I am grateful.
We are borne in a river of grace
that leaves nothing untouched by blessing.
I am grateful.
This, then, is the extravagant landscape of the world, given, given with pizzazz, given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
A listening heart is always open, sensitive to the joy and pain of others, offering a space within itself for the other to enter. It gives each person what is so badly needed—an affirmation of their place in this world.
The discipline of silence was leading me not only to a keener attention to language but to an improved capacity for hearing. On silent Mondays, I began to listen differently—to myself, to others, and to the world around me. It was a listening I would call both active and without an agenda...I began to observe that when there was no expectation for me to respond, acknowledge, analyze...I listened differently. My ego relaxed... In silence I was hearing others more keenly and witnessing my own thoughts, too, and seeing how they served to separate or to connect me. I was learning not to turn away from the parts of myself that were difficult.
how strange this silence would seem
without these crickets
here to explain
Monks take a vow of obedience...It means a loving listening: listening to the Word of God that comes to us moment by moment, listening to the message of the angel that comes to us hour by hour. The very word obedience means an intensive listening. The opposite of that obedience is absurdity, which means being deaf to life's challenges and meaning. We have the choice in our life between living with this loving listening or finding everything absurd...So the next time you say, "This is absurd," you might consider the more helpful question, "To what am I deaf here?"
No one listens, they tell me, and so I listen...
and I tell them what they have just told me,
and I sit in silence listening to them,
letting them grieve.
Perhaps we will see that listening is not a course you must register for, a new gimmick that will magically transform your social and professional life. It happens when you take time to look around you, to be still in the evenings, startled by mornings. To listen means to be aware, to watch, to wait patiently for the next communication clue. And, as anyone with a speech or hearing disability can tell you, listening is not always auditory communication...When earth's auditory energy is received as a whisper, or perhaps not at all, other senses become sharpened, grasping communicative clues we have forgotten, in the rush of life...Listening becomes visual, tactile, intuitive. Listening ... perhaps ... is just a mind aware.
Ibn Hasdai writing in the 13th century said: "[Man] was given two ears and one tongue, so that he may listen more than speak." It is a privilege just to listen. And there is a fine distinction between "listen to" and "to listen." When we "listen to" we are actively engaging our senses of sound for a particular audible cue. But, when we choose "to listen," we are opening ourselves up to the sounds of silence and solitude; to ways and words unanticipated, unscripted and often—unfamiliar. We do not choose these words; they choose us.
I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence the voice of God.
Listen
Now is the earth most still.
No plows break the bare and frozen ground.
No creature stirs from its earthbound
burrow, tunnel, nest.
Matter is quiet.
Its clamor
hushed, we hear the rising of the star,
the morning light,
the seed within itself unfolding,
glowing, growing.
All is quiet and the earth most still.
The fundamental premise of compassionate listening is that every party to a conflict is suffering, that every act of violence comes from an unhealed wound. And that our job as peacemakers is to hear the grievance of all parties and find ways to tell each side about the humanity and suffering of the other. We learn to listen with our "spiritual ear," to discern and acknowledge the partial truth in everyone—particularly those with whom we disagree. We learn to stretch our capacity to be present to another's pain.
For compassion to move from feeling to action it must practice the art of power. Spiritual action requires an alliance of love, power, and justice. As Paul Tillich said: in both interpersonal and political relationships love, power, and justice are inseparable. Without love, power becomes tyrannical and justice is only a name for the rule of strong. Without power, love is reduced to sentimentality and justice to an impotent ideal. Without justice, love is a perverse dance of domination and submission.
Non-violence is a power which can be wielded equally by all—children, young men and women, the elders, provided they have a living faith in the Source of Love and have therefore equal love for all humankind. When non-violence is accepted as the law of life it must pervade the whole being and not be simply applied to isolated acts.
FDR left a handwritten speech in a drawer when he died (to deliver at the UN). He wrote, "If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace... The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."
We must love them both—those whose opinions we share, those whose opinions we don't share. They've both labored in the search for truth and have helped us in finding it.
The Hebrew word for compassion comes from the same root as the word womb, suggesting that compassion makes us womb-like, nurturing of life. With compassion we enable all things to grow into their most beautiful and complete form.
Shall I inform you of a better act than fasting, alms, and prayers? Making peace between one another: enmity and malice tear up heavenly blossoms by the roots.
This tenderness for life, bodhichitta, awakens when we no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, from the basic fragility of existence. It awakens through kinship with the suffering of others. We train in the bodhichitta practices in order to become so open that we can take the pain of the world in, let it touch our hearts, and turn it into compassion.
Compassion is not an invitation to non-action or complacency...nor a license to sit idly, viewing the events of life from a perspective of non-involvement, numbness or denial. Becoming compassion is your invitation to immerse yourself fully into the experience of life, whatever the offering, from a place of non-judgment. Serving simultaneously as the path you may become, as well as the gift you offer to others, compassion is only possible in the healing of polarity: ie., transcending your personal polarity while remaining in this world of polarity.
You must not hate those who do wrong or harmful things; but with compassion, you must do what you can to stop them — for they are harming themselves, as well as those who suffer from their actions.
Renouncing self and crying out to evil
To end its wars, I seek a land that lies
All unprotected like a sleeping child;
Nor is my journey reckless and unwise.
Who doubts that love has an effective weapon
May meet with a surprise.
In his award-winning book, Exclusion & Embrace, Bosnian-born theologian Miroslav Volf says, "It may not be too much to claim that the future of our world will depend on how we deal with identity and difference."...Where articles of belief threaten to set people in opposition to one another, we may embody articles of peace. Where difference is demonized, we may host suppers with surprising guest lists...We may test the premise that God uses the weak to confound the strong as well as the promise that the God who made others different from us is revealed in them as well as us.
When I fail to embrace the solitude of God's peace, I get caught up in the world's downward spiral of violence and turmoil...Solitude plucks us out of the world's frenzy and centers us in nonviolence. Solitude silences the loud voices within us to allow the still, small voice of God to speak. Solitude gives God the time and space to disarm our inner wars and gives us the strength to receive God's gift of peace, and to learn to be at peace with ourselves and those around us.
Compassion is a kind of fire—it disturbs, it surprises, it ignites, it burns, it sears, and it warms. Compassion incinerates denial; it especially warms and melts cold hearts, cold structures, frozen minds, and self-satisfied lifestyles. Those touched by compassion have their lives turned upside down.
Blessing means to lay the hand upon the shoulder and say, "Despite everything you belong to God." That is how we deal with the world that inflicts so much suffering upon us. We don't give up, reject or despise it; we call it to love; we give it hope, we lay our hand upon it and receive God's blessing in joy and in sorrow. We who have ourselves been blessed can do no other than pass on this blessing...to be a blessing wherever we are. Only by the impossible can the world be renewed and God's blessing is the impossible.
The workplace is as good a school for spirituality as a monastery. Our work, our homes, our neighborhoods, our public meeting places, our voting booths, our classrooms – all are conducive to the practice of spirituality. Our turf, our stuff, however cluttered and discombobulated, are holy ground. The ordinary hassles of daily living are rich soil in which to grow and bloom.
Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.
I'm done with great things and big things, great intentions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water. Yet which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of our pride.
Work when there is work to do. Rest when you are tired. One thing done in peace will most likely be better than ten things done in panic.
If we have a goal in life, work becomes like mountaineering. We have a view of the role we want to play: a vision of becoming a complete person, contributing both as an individual and one of humankind. One stands at the foot of the mountain and the climb seems easy; yet after the first few hours it becomes difficult, you get tired, you rest, then the path clears only to get difficult again before the summit — but what joy and what ecstasy on reaching the top where the canopy of Heaven is all-embracing.
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities, and so on. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
If we...can see the issues of our day—the poverty, the racism, war and injustice—and if we can use the skills and resources that we get from our training at school or on the job, and if we can really be open to being equipped by the Spirit of God, then we will be used. We must lie on our beds at night and wrestle with how we can individually and collectively bring our faith from talk to power, how we can bring our faith and works to bear on the real issues of human need. I believe that right now we are facing a most difficult time in history. We are discovering that old strategies have failed and that the new ones, or rediscovered ones, will not let us hold onto our old lifestyles.
I had wondered what Nicholas was doing behind the closed door of his study at an early morning hour. Now I knew. He was not just reading and praying. He was following a discipline which focused him and made it possible for him to realize his full potential. He was lining up his center with the integrating principle at work in the universe, the principle which was ultimately stronger than the drive to fragment. He was tapping into the power of light which would allow him to live dynamically, surfing the chaos, splitting the darkness, serving the creator by serving others again and again.
To learn to meet our needs without continuous violence against one another and our only world would require an immense intellectual and practical effort, requiring the help of every human being perhaps to the end of human time. This would be work worthy of the name "human." It would be fascinating and lovely.