Stripped of words: a homily for Good Friday

 

I am preaching at Morning Prayer at the parish today, a reflection which had its seed in an interview with Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe by Fr. Jim Martin SJ (you can hear the relevant piece here) and in a reflection in the forthcoming book for next Lent.

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…So shall he startle many nations,
because of him, kings shall stand speechless;
For those who have not been told shall see,
those who have not heard shall ponder it.…Isaiah 52:15

As we move through the Triduum, we also grow silent in the face of the enormity of what has been accomplished by God. Later today we will sit with St. John’s account of the passion, invited as Isaiah implores us to watch and to ponder. When I hear this version of the passion I am often struck by how Jesus, too, gradually grows silent. Gone is the sharp give and take with the religious authorities. He offers virtually no defense to Pilate. There are no words to reassure the repentent thief crucified next to him about paradise.

Once Jesus wept as he fervently prayed for relief. Now, we no longer hear him lifting up long, eloquent prayers to the Father. In John’s account of the crucifixion, we do not hear him pray at all. He does not cry out to God asking why he was abandoned. He does not commend himself to the Father’s care.

In the end, there is only his battered body, wracked with thirst, hanging on a cross. 

Some time ago I heard Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe reflect on what it had been like to try to pray during his recovery from a grueling surgery. “When I tried to pray the Our Father,” recounted Cardinal Radcliffe, “I couldn’t get past the two words…Our Father…I was just a body lying in bed.”  Still, he thirsted, not just for the water he was not allowed to have, but for God.

Here is this man who preached to the synod — who preached to the pope about hope and prayer —  confessing he could not pray. How many of us have found ourselves in these straits? Caught up in the maelstrom of illness — our own or those of people we love —  or overcome by fear or despair in the face of events that upend our lives, or shake the world, and unable to find the strength to reach for God. When even the prayers we know by heart slip away from us.

I am reminded of a snippet of poetry from Ranier Rilke’s Book of Hours, “like sand slipping through fingers,  all my cells are open, and all so thirsty. I ache…in a hundred places, but mostly in the middle of my heart.” Thirsting for God in every cell, aching for mercy in the depths of our hearts, our physical body becomes the prayer. Like the disciples who ask Jesus to teach them the words to use in prayer, we, too, are looking to Jesus to teach us how to pray in our most desperate moments, when the anguish of our wounds  is more than we can bear, and we cannot find even those words, “Our Father”.

Jesus’ silence on the cross speaks volumes. His arms wordlessly stretched out between heaven and earth, his whole body is a prayer offered to the Father for our salvation. It is a potent reminder that when our strength fails us, we can still pray as Jesus taught us from the cross, arms stretched out in longing, every cell thirsting. That when injustice or illness or infirmity or age strips us of our words, our very body becomes a prayer.

Jarred silence

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— TinyTalesDaily (@tinytalesdaily.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 9:01 AM

I am, you anxious one.
Don’t you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch? 
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings. 
Can’t you see me standing before you cloaked in stillness?
...And with the silence of stars I enfold your cities made by time.”
— Rainer Marie Rilke

from Rilke's Book of Hours translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I used to dive into the silence once a month at the Jesuit Center near Wernersville and perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, would offer to bring back a bit of the silence for friends. I have been thinking about how to package up silence recently. Or rather, contemplating how to open a space for stillness and silence for those who are seeking it. What would it look like to set up that sort of portal in the parish church for an hour? What could you give people to take home...if not in a jar, but a gift of a way of drawing that cloak of silence and stillness around themselves if only for a few minutes?

It is so tempting to try to push lots of advice in, but I keep returning to Abba Moses advice, "Sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." Or to riff on Mary Vorse's advice to young writers (including  Sinclair Lewis) “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”: to sit in prayer is simply to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. I don't want to constrain prayer.

As to the jars in the TinyTale, I am with Marty Laird OSA (Into the Silent Land) on the notion that contemplation will somehow erase the woundedness we experience. Opening that jar of permanent silence isn't necessarily going to hush the screams in the other jar she bought. Prayer is not snorting lines of euphoric peace, warns Fr. Laird.

Three Books: Stones Laid Before the Lord

Three books set in contemplative spaces, two fiction, one non-fiction.

I picked up Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood when I was in London last year (it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). It is set in Australia, in an isolated monastery. It reminded me very strongly of In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, both in style and themes. So much so I went back re-read Godden's novel (which I'd first read in high school.) 

Both follow a group of women living in a isolated religious community. Overall the plots revolve around an older woman who comes into the community by a unusual route. There are mysterious deaths. Threads from the past that pull at the future.  A member of the community that doesn't quite fit in, she is a bit too high profile, a bit too polished. The style of the two is also similar, slightly disjoint, jumping in time, demanding that the reader fill in the gaps.

Wood's descriptions of the mouse plague in Australia were epic (and epically disturbing), and track actual event. While cold feet might have been a trial to my vocation as they were to Godden's Dame Phillipa, I think I could have toughed it out. The mice? I think I would have fled in horror.

Aflame, Pico Iyer's memoir of his experiences with silence and contemplative monks (Catholic and Buddhist), takes us inside a non-fictional monastery of men who cling to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur. I have been to this monastery and stayed in the hermitages there. I recognize some of the people and many of the places.  For all that I love this place and sacred silence in general and appreciate Iyer's writing, the book felt oddly thin. Admittedly it can be hard to wrap words around silence, to reveal what might be moving in heart and soul. Perhaps that why fiction feels more real? 

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The title was inspired by Stones Laid Before the Lord: A History of Monastic Architecture, a focus on the buildings, less so on the people who inhabit them. 

More books from my shelf that are related: An Infinity of Little Hours (Nancy Maguire, an anthropologist looks at the journeys of novices at a modern-day Carthusian charterhouse in England); Love on the Mountain: The Chronicle Journal of a Camaldolese Monk (Robert Hale, O.S.B. Cam., just what it says, autobiographical account of life as a monk at the monastery Iyer describes) and The Hermits of Big Sur (Paula Huston, a history of the Camaldolese monastery at Big Sur).

 

285 hz

“In 1988, Biochemist Glen Rein, Phd, converted and recorded Solfeggio scale Gregorian chants to scalar audio waves. The results were played to test tubes containing DNA. By measuring UV light absorption, Rein could document the effect of the music on DNA. He also compared the chants with other forms of music, including rock. While rock music had little or no influence, the chants caused a marked increase of light absorption, up to nine percent, leading Rein to conclude that Solfeggio scale sound frequencies cause resonance in DNA, and may have healing properties.”  — from Gaia

It was like being inside the resonant cavity of a guitar. My study rang with the high pitched noise of my neighbor’s leaf blower. It would build up to a great whine, wound like an old watch spring tighter and tighter, until with a whoosh it would stop, and I could feel all the tension melt away. This went all on afternoon. I could understand the necessity that drove this. The leaves needed to be cleared to the curb before the expected rainstorm. It was the weekend. The weather was temperate. But it was relentless, and I am working hard to finish a manuscript.

I finally pulled out my decibel measuring app, trying to figure out if it was the sheer noise level or a particular frequency.  The app showed the dominant frequency was 285 hz (and the level a reasonable 70 or so decibels). It was too sharp for a C#, too flat for a D, so it felt off pitch to me. I was curious if it was a particularly obnoxious frequency, so did a quick search, to find that 285 hz is one of the Solfeggio frequencies. One with apparent healing powers.

“285 Hz – This tone is useful when treating wounds, cuts, burns or any other form of damaged tissue. 285 Hz Solfeggio Frequency is said to be directly connected to our body´s, mind and soul´s blueprint for optimal health and physical wellbeing, due to its amazing ability to remember what should be and to return cells to its original form. It influences energy fields sending them message to restructure damaged organ. 285 Hz is about remembering and healing you, your internal organs and your energy.”

LOL. This frequency seemed directly connection to my brain all right, but healing was not what I was getting from it. I dug out my over-the-ear headphones and cued up some Star Trek engine noise. Now that was healing....

Receive The Body of Christ: The Weight of Glory

I slept at the shelter last week, drifting off to the sounds of the beeping delivery trucks at the Acme across the street on an air mattress in the hallway. The Virgin Mother and I stood guard at the door. I had arrived after everyone had settled in for the night, the lights dimmed and the air hovering between warm and cool. It reminded me of a summer's night at Wernersville.  Just enough of a breeze stirring, a sufficiency of grace, a heaping measure of silence.

I was up at 5:30, washing my face, thinking as I did of Jane Hirshfield's early morning icy, awakening slap.  5:38 am, the van appeared at the door, simultaneously the sun appeared over the horizon, its rays careening down the still and dim hallway. A little one popped out into the dimness, bright pink skirt, and brighter blue shoes, twirling in the sunlight with the motes of dust.

Two mothers calmly juggled babies and bags out the door.  And the little one raised her arms, wordlessly asking for a boost to the van.  I leaned down and picked her up. Receive the body of Christ. Amen.

I was surprised at how little glory can weigh, and how much.

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Jane Hirshfield's poem, A Cedary Fragrance, recalls the early morning routine in the Zen monastery where she trained.

Read this bit from C.S. Lewis's Weight of Glory

All creation holds its breath

“All creation holds its breath, listening within me,
because, to hear you, I keep silent. ”

Anita Barrows.
Rilke's Book of Hours. Book of a Monastic Life, I,17

Soundings

It's the first day of final exams.  I always think it will be a quiet day, no classes, no grading yet.  But as always, it was a day packed with meetings: office hours, writing conferences with the research methodology students, award ceremony (two ! chemistry majors being honored), reception for a retiring colleague (with a surprise appearance from an alum, now herself a faculty member).  A steady stream of people through my office and in the hallways.

I came home and scrounged up a meal, savoring the silence along with the local bread and cheese. A neighbor was practicing the trumpet, beautiful jazz borne on the wind, dancing down the street and drifting in the window to languidly wrap itself around my ankles.  Now the wind is stirring the new leaves.  The insects are pinging against the screen door, and the neighbor's air conditioning whines like a giant gnat, which I only noticed when it ceases.

This silence sluices over me, cool and dark.

Tales from the hermitage: Sleeping beauty

Every morning when I walk through the door to the back patio to go out to pray, I have to brush the spider webs off my face.  I wonder if I've slept, not for a night, but for years.  I've been trying not to disturb my guardians - and you can see that their web has attracted quite a bit of detritus.

The week of near total silence in my ad hoc suburban hermitage has passed quickly, and productively.  I've sent two pieces of writing of to their respective editors, and am nearly ready to dispatch a third.  Tonight I will break the silence by driving up to Wernersville to see Patient Spiritual Director.

This is a luxury, this time of silence and solitude, but it's not a fairy tale isolation either — the spider webs notwithstanding.  But like fasting, which sharpens my eyes for hunger around me, this solitude has also helped me see the isolated and lonely who live around me.  The new mother across the street, juggling a little one who'd just thrown up while her toddler tugs at her hand.  The woman hustling to walk the mile to the church on Sunday in the heat of an August noon.  Reminders that this time is oriented outward, it's not a "staycation" or a retreat from the craziness of the world (though I admit to some pleasure in not having to make the transition into the beginning-of-the-semester chaos), it's a teachable moment.

"Sit in your cell," says St. Romuald, "and your cell will teach you everything."

Ask me about my vow of silence

Actually don't, since I can't answer you. My voice vanished completely on Thursday morning, lost on I-95 somewhere between Washington, DC and Bryn Mawr.  It went from squeaks and squeals to nothingness; at the moment it's back, though a bit rough and limited to very short conversations, as the Theologically Inclined Philosopher can attest.

This is mostly a non-issue as there is no one at home to talk to, the boys are back at college and Math Man has been at a series of workshops. I don't have to teach, I'm not cantoring.  Fluffy is content with silence as long as there are crunchies in her bowl (and doesn't accept excuses if there are not).

I posted on Facebook a photo captioned "Morning prayer at the hermitage" — taken in the backyard, and meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek commentary on my lack of voice and the absence of other residents of the household, but which led some people to assume I'd gone away on retreat.

I am at home, but it feels as if the rest of the world has retreated.  The neighborhood is cloaked in its usual August silence, not even the howl of lawn mowers or the grumble of air conditioners disturbed the quiet. The cicadas tweet, the cardinals pipe, the leave rustle, but that's about it.

I wrote, I read, I prayed the office for the feasts of St. Monica and St. Augustine and the Passion of St. John. I cooked. I did the laundry. And for three days I didn't talk to anyone.

It's been a fascinating experience, different from a silent retreat: I'm working, I'm not having a daily meeting with a spiritual director, or chanting monastic offices.

Today I went to Mass - the inability to sing was painful.  Wednesday I'm off to see Patient Spiritual Director for the first time since Lent (he's been ill.)  But there will be more silence to explore.

Summer silence

Last night Math Man and I watched a documentary about life in Antarctica on Netflix. The film by New Zealand filmmaker Anthony Powell, focusses not on the science, but on the everyday life of the people who work to support the science. The cooks, shopkeepers, pilots and communications techs.  Through the austral winter.  As I sit on my back patio, surrounded by greenery, warmed by the sun, it's hard to imagine that at this moment it's dark 24 hours a day and 27^oF below zero at McMurdo station.  (Fascinatingly, Google's weather icon shows a bright yellow sun for "clear" at McMurdo, though the sun was last seen above the horizon on April 24th.)

The film is visually rich, with beautiful time lapse photography of vast panoramas and tiny details.  The rugged reality of a visit to the penguins in midsummer is revealed, along with delightful clips of penguins flying in and out of the water.  It's not hard to see why it won so many awards.

I was struck by the silence in the desolate Dry Valleys —  no trees to rustle in the wind, no birds chirruping, no traffic noise.  This morning, I was struck by the silence in my own backyard.  Yes, I could hear the birds, and the bell ringing in the tower of the Episcopal church a mile and quarter away.  But there was no roar of air conditioners, no leaf blowers screaming, no rumbling of lawn mowers.  It wasn't silence in the same sense as that scene in the Dry Valley, but there was the same sense of stillness in the air.

As an aside, Dropbox mailed me a flashback, a handful of photos taken more or less around the 4th of July for almost the past decade.  I was struck by how many years I've been on retreat around the 4th.

Silence is about who I am, not where I sit

The last week has been as raucously wild as Madeleine Delbrêl's factory.  I have: gone to Manhattan to help launch a book I contributed to (up and back in a single evening), been on the radio, recorded an interview for TV, been called a rockstar of chemistry (honestly, I'm not, though I'm touched that someone thinks I am), been privileged to serve at the altar for First Eucharist, given a public lecture on science and religion, had 20-odd students to dinner (cooked by 10 people in my kitchen at once) and been part of some challenging meetings for work.

I'm standing deep within the interior silence amid the clamor, but I have to confess, I'm ready to flee to a nice hermitage somewhere.  Silence may be about being, but I could use some sitting.  Here, perhaps?

This column appeared at CatholicPhilly.com on 27 Apr 2015.

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There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. 1 Cor 12:4-6

I sat in the second to last pew, praying Evening Prayer before the Saturday vigil Mass. Warm spring breezes billowed through the open doors of the church, carrying with them the sounds of passing cars, and people walking past on the street. The vestibule burbled with conversations, as that evening’s batch of excited First Communicants gathered around the baptismal font, and parishioners streamed in.

It sounds distracting, but in truth it wasn’t. And for all that it wasn’t quiet, the river of sound had a current of silence within it. I thought of Madeleine Delbrêl, a poet and author, who founded a contemplative lay community in the suburbs of Paris in the early 20th century. She wondered why we thought that the howling wind and the pounding sea “all count as silence, (but) not the pounding of the factory machines (or) the rumbling of the trains at the station?” Or even the murmuring sound of an assembly gathering to celebrate the Eucharist?

For Delbrêl silence wasn’t so much an external condition, but an internal stance, one that was still and quiet, the better to hear God in the wind, in the roar of traffic or in the hum of a full church.

As Catholics, we believe that Christ is present to us at the Eucharist not only in the bread and wine we consecrate, but in the Scriptures, in the person of the priest — and in the assembly itself. Gathered for this purpose, we are the real presence of Christ, long before we reach the Eucharistic prayer.

What do I hear God saying in those voices washing over me? Delight and joy, in the warmth of the weather, and the ongoing gift of Easter. Excitement about receiving Christ for the first time, calling me to remember how deeply I desired Christ, not just when I first received, but now.

God is present to us in myriad ways. In the deep silence of an empty chapel warmed by the late afternoon sun. In the bustle of a city sidewalk. In the woman wailing with hunger in the subway station. And in the hum of a crowded church, poised to receive him. If you cannot recognize Christ in the beggar at the door, offered St. John Chrysostom, you will not find him in the chalice. There are many voices, but one God, one Lord, speaking to us through them all.

Sounds of summer writing

There are no bells or buzzers at college to tell you when classes are changing.  Inside the classroom I can tell when it's nearly time to go by the way students begin to wink out — first one or two, then entire rows vanish — as they transport themselves mentally, if not physically to their next destination.  In my office, which sits at a crossroads along a linking corridor between wings, I can hear the rustle of backpacks and bodies as students flow like sand through the neck of an hourglass from one wing to the other.

Writing in the study under the eaves at home, such hour markers are entirely absent.  I can look up from desk, shocked to find two hours or more have slid undetected through my fingers.  There is a silkiness to time in the summer.  The birds sing endlessly outside, the leaves of the enormous oak outside my window stir sleepily in the breeze, the sounds of the train that run nearby brush by my consciousness.  There is the continuous throaty hum of lawn mowers and leaf blowers, fighting their endless and losing fight against entropy, trying to contain the abundant growth of summer.  And then...

There is the high pitched squealing from the neighbor children's motorized trikes on the driveway across from me.  I find myself scrunching up my shoulder blades in the aural equivalent of a squint, and have to take a deep breath and let their sounds go.  And the car alarm on the next block that goes off for 10 minutes at a stretch that has me routinely fantasizing about printing out the research that shows they are not deterrents to theft and taking a walk until I find the offending car.

As much as I'm momentarily annoyed by the snags in my summer silks, they are good reminders to stand up and stretch. To let the sounds of summer not just dance around the edges, but to soak into my being.  To take my book, my yellow pad or even my laptop out onto the back patio and breathe.  To stop trying to rein in and control the abundance of summer's growth.

On the green: US Open and Ignatian Retreats

Last week at this time I was still on retreat, sitting in an Adirondack chair in the eastern cloister at the Jesuit retreat house, looking out over the expanse of lawn that tumbles down to a stand of trees that was (at least this week) the favored hunting ground of the hawk that spent the week riding the thermals up to the top of the hill.¹  Tonight, Math Man is eagerly anticipating some time contemplating expanses of green.  No, he's not going on retreat, but to the US Open which is being held about a half-mile from our house (as the hawk flies).

He's wandering only 120 acres, compared to the 240 I had access to, but otherwise, it's not such a different experience:

• No cell phones or other electronic devices.
• Silence prevails; necessary speech needs to be taken to the fringes (and done in hushed tones) lest you disturb those praying, uh, playing.
• Lots of walking.
• Weather.  There will be interesting weather.
• Companions along the way (25,000 folks for Math Man, 40 for me).

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1.  Don't ask how I know this. All I will say is that Fluffy had prepared me well, and that while the practice of looking up has much to commend it, it pays to watch where you are walking on occasion.

Postcards from silence: new vistas at Wernersville

I wrung 18 hours of silence out of last week's chaos.  Time enough for a conversation with Patient Spiritual Director and a long walk.  In the decade or so I have been visiting the old Jesuit Novitiate at Wernersville, I had never walked the path to the northeast corner, which overlooks Reading.  My ankle is healed enough to go "off-road" at last, so I walked down the hedgerows and looped back up the hill and to the overlook to take in this new-to-me view.  A reminder that even in the silence, the world is still there.

The next morning a large group was visiting for breakfast, a talk and tour.  In the face of this crowd I was taking my cues from Arsenius: fuge, tace, quiesce.  Wend my way through the babbling conversation in the dining room to the kitchen, make a cup of tea, and flee for the stillness and quiet of the eastern cloister.  On my way in, I saw what I had never seen before at Wernersville, a man in a navy blue jacket and tie striding down the first floor corridor, coat tails flying and talking a mile a minute on his cell phone, "The place is so (f*ng) uh, you know, enormous."  The expletive was (barely) edited out as he turned his head and caught sight of the open doors of the chapel.

Despite my desperate need for the silence, the morning's noise felt joyful.  This was just another new vista.  The world is still here, not held at arm's length from the stillness, but burrowed right into its center.
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For a visual walk through a day at Wernersville, see this post by Robin (we managed to overlap for 40 delightfully liminal minutes).  Her photos beautifully capture the vast stillness and warmth of the place.

Margaret Almon writes here of her husband's visits to Wernersville, along with some photos of the art to be found within.

Reflecting in the Light

Last Wednesday night I climbed off the hamster wheel I'd been on for the last few weeks (watch these hamsters to get a sense of what it's been like!), the result of a calendar clogged with evening and weekend meetings.  I went from class to office hours to class to a faculty meeting to....giving a reflection on the extravagance of being "unbusy" at a local retreat house.  Yes, I get the irony there.

One of my Jesuit friends says, "first we preach to ourselves" and as I wrote it, I heard in Martha's encounter with Jesus in Luke's gospel, not her whining, or Jesus' remonstrance, but her bone-deep longing for time with God, her almost overwhelming desire to be able to let go her grasp on all the stuff that bustles bossily through our days.  So I tried to preach to myself, and let God take care of the rest.

I felt as if I let go my grasp as I walked through door, from the brisk night air into the warmth and gentle light of the retreat house.  The sisters were warmly welcoming (tea!).  There was no bustling about, just enough direction to get us gathered and centering.

When I laid my notes atop the Gospel and spoke, I was suddenly and deeply aware of God undergirding my work.  God behind me, God before me, God underneath me. The stillness in the chapel was incredible, we sat there, women young and old, and listened to God, enfolded in the warmth and the light and the Word.  The service was short, less than an hour from start to finish, but just right for a midweek night.

I'm talking again on December 12th, but am looking forward to going to the one the week before where I'm not talking, but can just listen.
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Upcoming programs at the IHM Conference Center are listed here.  Recording of my talk, coming soon!  If you are in the area, stop in, it's an oasis of stillness on the Main Line...

Photo is of my back step, a place of prayer, set with a cup of tea and my breviary.

The texture of a silence

A couple of weeks ago, PrayTell had a thought-provoking post on cognitive engagement and liturgy, based on a comparison between an experience of a Dominican rite liturgy in Latin and the current ordinary Roman Rite.  Fritz Bauerschmidt's final questions offer, at least in my opinion, an implicit definition of excellent liturgy:  "Can we craft liturgy that is clearly both something we do and something that sweeps us up in a movement quite independent of our efforts? Can our liturgy be intelligible without being mentally taxing? Can it be mysterious without being mystifying? Or is the quest for such a liturgy just tilting at windmills. I, for one, certainly hope not."

There was some suggestions in the comments that the old Latin masses (what these days is called the extraordinary form) were inherently more reverent and perhaps more silent.  I responded to one such with by noting what I see as a tendency to conflate “contemplative/mystical” with the extraordinary form and “noisy/didactic” with the ordinary Roman rite. 
    
Fr. Allen McDonald replied that "The silence of the EF Mass is different than the silences that should be observed in the OF such as before the penitential act, after the readings, the homily and Holy Communion."  These are "silences just for the sake of silence"¹ rather than silences which emerge from a properly prepared congregation contemplating "official prayers of the Church being prayed in a silent way."  

I'm going to admit that I'm a bit put off by his characterization of the Eucharist as a contemplation (by the properly disposed) of someone else praying and gesturing in prayer.  I say this even in the face of a memorable retreat where my own prayer was certainly sustained by meditating on the stalwart prayer of the sisters around me in the chapel.  

That said, I'm grateful as his comments have made me attentive to the nature of the silence during Mass in my parish over the last two weeks.  Silence is not what my community does because we should, it is our default stance in the celebration of the Eucharist, you can hear it (or rather not hear it) even between the words of the prayers.  It's a silence that feels, in fact, not of our doing at all, but part and parcel of our being.  Be still — let go your grasp — and know that I am God. (Ps 46:10)  Here, at the Eucharistic table, we find ourselves in such intimate communion with God we cannot help but know that, and respond in kind.   I think this might be what Fritz Bauerschmidt is getting at with his description of being swept into a mystery, where our own responses swell into the stillness and fade, where the presider's prayers cascade down the altar steps and wash over us, the chant swirls up and out, but all of it, ever and always pouring into a silence whose depth and breadth and height knows no bounds.  Be still — be silent — and know that I am God. 

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1.  Sacred silence in the Roman Missal, according to the GIRM, is not just for the sake of silence, but has a variety of purposes: "For in the Penitential Act and again after the invitation to pray, individuals recollect themselves; whereas after a reading or after the Homily, all meditate briefly on what they have heard; then after Communion, they praise God in their hearts and pray to him."

Photo is of the door to the chapel at the old Jesuit novitiate.  A place that has held within its share of silent prayer and more...

Things that go beep in the night

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And other things that go bump in the night
Good Lord, deliver us!
Scottish Prayer

...or Celtic prayer or Cornish prayer....or, who knows! I first knew this as the prayer my mother would say when I woke up in the night with a bad dream. It was light enough to give me a bit of perspective (a tiger in the closet, perhaps not in February in the Midwest?), but solid enough to depend on: Good Lord, deliver me!

As the sky grew more threatening this afternoon, Crash and I were crashed in the sunroom watching a movie and doing a bit of email, respectively. The movie dialog was so bad that I'd plugged into a soothing soundscape on my computer (rain, given the weather it seemed appropriate). I thought I was hearing a beeping noise, but convinced myself it was leaking in from movie. I took the earbuds out to consult with Crash about dinner and discovered he was as mystified by the *beep* as I was.

We have new smoke detectors. The *beep* sounded like a smoke detector. It went off every 45 seconds or so. Ah, we must need new batteries. Uh-oh. No 9V in the house. These detectors are wired in, so you can't shut off the noise. Crash and I head out to (a) pick up dinner and (b) pick up batteries.

Crash the Tall replaces the batteries. Things are still *beep*ing. I check the manual. It suggests a fault in the wiring. Call an electrician. How long can I stand the beeping? And after a house fire 25 years ago, I'm hard-wired, shall we say, to flinch when I hear the sound. There is no way to turn the things off short of turning off all the electricity to the house and removing the batteries. Which is arguably not a good idea.

Math Man comes home; we eat, to the tune of the s. Crash bails to go to dinner with friends (yes, he's eaten, but he can't take the ing any longer). Putting my dishes away, I'm in the kitchen when a *beep* goes off. And it's not coming from the smoke detector. It's coming from the shelf with my cookbooks and bins of useful stuff (flashlights, band-aids, cat-hair removal aids for those who wear black).

Math Man and I start hunting through the bins. What could we have that would beep? On the top shelf in the corner is a white unmarked box, still sealed in cellophane. *beep*

It's an old carbon monoxide detector, given to us years back by Math Man's brother (a public health grad student with an interest in the effects of low level CO). I already had detectors, so we put it on the shelf as an extra. *beep* There is a button that lets you stop the *beep* for 12 hours at a time. We press it and wait. No *beep*...but what are the next steps?

It is a sealed unit, no user serviceable parts inside. When the batteries fail you are supposed to return it to the manufacturer. The company has gone out of business (I think I know why).

And what was the company thinking? Can you imagine mailing something to Texas that was beeping every 45 seconds? The FBI would be at your door in short order. After they evacuated the post office, and got a bomb squad in to dispose of the package.

Do we keep hitting the button every 12 hours until the battery that powers the battery-dead alarm finally dies? And how long will that be? We can't throw it away. Can you imagine if our garbage started beeping?

A bit of research to be sure I knew more or less what was inside of this thing, and I took matters into my own hands. A large screw driver and a bit of leverage and I had severed the @#$% *beep* from its power source. The AA batteries were both glued AND soldered in.

Silence.

Column: An active silence

I've been reading Wound of Love, by an anonymous Carthusian (or as Google books would have A. Carthusian). It's a miscellaneous collection of essays, conferences and homilies, written by contemporary Carthusians for their brothers. The essay referred to below is called "The Facets of Silence."

This column appeared in the June 2012 issue of the Catholic Standard & Times. Read it at Catholic Philly.

A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountain and crushing rocks before the Lord — but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake — but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was fire — but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound. 1 Kings 19:11-12

“Take a look at measure 12, it’s the most critical thing you will do in the entire piece,” cautioned the director. “Note the two rests there? Do not sing! Stop, or you’ll be very lonely.” And embarrassed.

A couple of dozen parents of choral seniors are gathered in a small practice room, trying in twenty minutes to master a sung blessing (acapella, in four part harmony) to be sung to our graduating children at the end of the night’s concert.

The text is the beautiful blessing given in Numbers — “May the Lord bless you and keep you…” — set to two dozen measures of music, hundreds of notes rippling over each other, every space on the staffs filled, except for this beat and a half. Stop. Wait.

It may sound odd, but as a cantor, my favorite part of singing the psalm is not the moment when the Church first fills with our response to the first reading. It’s not even the moment of exquisite relief when I’m sure I’ve found the note that I was tentatively hunting for in practice. No, it’s the thirty or so seconds of silence my parish keeps before the psalmist stands and goes to the ambo. We stop. We wait.

Unlike my students, who often let me know it’s time to move on to their next class by noisily packing up their books and papers, these silences are still. We aren’t collectively itching to get on to the psalm and second reading; we are as engaged in listening as we were when the lector was reading.

“Reading is bound to silence,” wrote Peter of Celle, a 12th century Benedictine abbot, in his lessons for monks. Like composer Claude Debussy, who 700 years later defined music as “the space between the notes.” Peter suggests that silence is not just empty space, but something that is active, that tunes us in to words just spoken and words to come. The silences in our liturgies aren’t accidents, the inevitable result of the time it takes to move one person off the ambo and the next person on.

As Elijah stayed safely in his cave while rock-crushing winds and harrowing fires swept past, emerging, head covered, to hear God calling him in the near total silence that followed, we hear God approaching us in the reading. So, too, we emerge, wrapping ourselves in the silence, to hear what God is calling us to, here and now.

Last week I read a series of reflections on silence by an anonymous Carthusian novice master who pointed out that sacred silence is a communal activity, that it’s not a private affair between individuals and God. We are entrusted to each other’s care in these silences, he notes, safeguarding the silence for our neighbors.

While my parish does not practice the profound silence that the Carthusian monks and nuns do, even in these brief moments at Mass, I sense the support of the assembly as we craft a silence — together — to listen to what God has to say in each of our hearts.

The novice master encourages his young monks to consider the ways in which their silence wells up and flows out over the earth, supporting God’s revelation of Himself to those far beyond the boundaries of the monastery gates.

In the end, the parents did not have to carry the sung blessing on our own. We were supported by the rest of the chorale, their gloriously well-trained voices welling up and flowing out, their eyes pinned to their director’s hands. Holding us in song, and binding us together in perfect silence.


Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear. — Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. in The Habit of Perfection

The narrow road

A week ago, I set out in my borrowed car to drive over the pass in the Santa Lucia mountain range and then head north up the coastal road. The drive is a spectacular one, and I had to admit spectacularly fun in this little car with the top down. The road winds through marsh and sea meadow and then begins to hug the cliffs in earnest. The signs warn that the road narrows, and I'm glad of the small car when I pass a bus on a tight curve going in the opposite direction. Then another sign - road narrows. How can this steep and serpentine path narrow any more and still carry two lanes of traffic? Fifty miles after I turn north I spot the sign I am looking for: New Camaldoli Hermitage, 2 miles. I turn right and head up and up. I pray that I won't meet another car going down, and take two deep breaths when I see a brown UPS van headed my way. Where can I go? I squeeze by,clinging to the cliff, thinking I could just about reach out the passenger window and touch the granite protruding from the cliff. The van, a 500 foot drop off to his left, seems unperturbed. I park, peel my fingers off the wheel and head off to find the guestmaster.



By 6 pm I have brought in my one bag and my furoshiki packed with books, and managed to figure out where the psalms and chant tones for Vespers are in the Camaldolese Office book (but not the opening verse, or Regina Caeli). The Liturgy of the Hours, usually such a stable spot in my day, now feels much like the road I've driven to get here. Chant tones I don't know, a different arrangement of the psalter; I'm clinging to the edge, watching for signs, hoping not to run into anyone. I tentatively set my voice into the chant, thankful for the strong and clear tones of the precentor. I'm almost as white-knuckled at the end of the Office, as I was at the end of my drive up. The 30 minutes of silent meditation in the chapel that followed the final hymn was more on the order of a collapse into God's arms than any attempt at organized prayer. I wonder if I'll ever have the courage to drive down the road again, or for that matter, the strength to stay up here and face God, alone except for the psalms?

Of whirlwinds, teenagers and going on retreat: Phaith in May

I drove up to the silence yesterday, for an appointment with Patient Spiritual Director.  The weather cooperated to the extent of giving me one long solitary walk when I arrived in the morning, but it rained determinedly the rest of the day.  The one retreat in house was small, and not keeping silence, and so I opted for a less silent time than usual and talked at both lunch and dinner.  I'm not feeling deprived; I leave for California, for a completely silent retreat here, on Saturday — and so will enjoy a generous portion of stillness and silence then.

My column in Phaith this month takes up how to start planning to go on retreat, and was written in an incredibly noisy spot — the high school auditorium as the stage sets for the musical were under construction!

"I’m writing this sitting on the floor of the high school auditorium. Behind me at the board Nick is running sound checks, 'test, test, testestest…' The rough crunching emanating from the stage is not what it sounds like — a velociraptor having a snack — but turns out to be Meredith cutting trim to fit around the two story tall emerald throne. The whine of a power screwdriver rises over the edgy jazz music burbling from the wings.

I love the energy that whirls around the theater, a cyclone that sucks in paint and plywood and teenagers until it finally touches down on stage leaving behind a functional snippet of another world. Still, I find my mind drifting to far quieter worlds, to this morning’s email confirming a week long stay in a hermitage at a Camaldolese monastery in the California mountains. 'Sit in your cell like it is paradise.' begins the Rule of St. Romauld, the founder of the Camoldolese Benedictines."

Read the rest here...

Crash, reading over my shoulder as I sat on the floor of the auditorium (my computer plugged into the sound board's power strip), enjoyed this sentence:  I love the energy that whirls around the theater, a cyclone that sucks in paint and plywood and teenagers until it finally touches down on stage leaving behind a functional snippet of another world. Their show was The Wiz, hence the tornado imagery.