On this Sunday morning, like almost every morning for several years now, I start my day with sitting in silence. Some days this time includes silent prayers; most days it begins with my mind jumping around from one thing to enough, what Buddhists call “monkey mind.” But if I stay with it, eventually things settle down, and something deeper happens. A Quaker elder was once asked, “How long should I pray?” And he responded, “Long enough that God starts praying you.”
In my experience, that shift often takes about twenty minutes. At some point, my mind seems to tire of its chatter, it settles down and makes room for silence to come. “A silence where another voice may speak,” as Mary Oliver wrote. There is something restorative for me in that silence, and I don’t know how I’d live without it.
Thousands of years ago the psalmist wrote, “For God alone my soul in silence waits,” (Psalm 62:1). There’s something powerful about waiting—it’s hard for most of us, it’s countercultural, and it’s what we’re being forced to do these days. And if you embrace the waiting, there can be unexpected blessing in it too.
Do you know the prayer “Keeping Quiet,” by Pablo Neruda? It’s an appropriate meditation for these days:
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about...
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.
Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
