Shhhh!
7th July 2023
This is an article I’ve written for the Gloucester Citizen
Do you like silence? Or do you avoid it? I’ve just been on a 3 Day silent retreat. It was in a beautiful centre in North Wales – the place they filmed The Big Silence a few years ago.
It always takes a little time to settle into the silence, but after a while I begin to slow down, and to stop. I spend a long time just gazing out of the window in my room, and appreciating the beauty. I learn to wander instead of walking fast. I pay attention to what I see – the trees, the birds, the insects. And I pay attention to what I eat. One day I come down for coffee in the refectory and have a Hobnob. I eat it slowly, bite by bite, savouring it. It’s the most delicious biscuit I’ve ever tasted. Instead of munching it quickly and thoughtlessly I’m receiving it as a gift, mindfully.
Gradually my busy thoughts also slow down. I begin to sense the silence within me. I carry it carefully, like a precious bowl full of water. My prayer becomes less about speaking and more about finding a deep stillness. There’s a story about the famous French priest from Ars. He sees a local farmer come to sit in the church each day. He asks him what he is doing. ‘I look at him, and he looks at me’, says the farmer.
Contemplation is a different sort of prayer. It has been described as ‘a long, loving look at the real’. We look at the world, and our lives, and at God. And he looks at us – at the real us. And when we have been looked at in love, we have courage to look at ourselves, not with judgment but with acceptance and kindness.
We cannot all go on retreat, and even if we do, we have to come home. But we can find times of silence and stillness in our days. We might spend just five minutes in quiet, focussing on our breathing, gently saying a simple phrase in our mind, like ‘I am with you’ as we breathe in and out. Allowing God to look on us with love. And then carrying that deep inner stillness with us into the rest of our day. Try it – and see what a difference it can make.