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Webwatch: 2007-02: The Silent Treatment

Webwatch is a column published in the Covenant Companion Magazine every month. It is written by Heidi Griepp, manager of Covenant Internet Services and an avid web wanderer. This month, Webwatch takes a look at running away to be with God.

For the last five years I’ve gone to a retreat center for a weekend silent retreat. After returning from one recently, I’ve been thinking about the spirituality of silence and solitude.

Silence has been part of Christian spiritual disciplines and prayer for centuries. It is one of the most powerful tools we have in our arsenal for cultivating (or damaging) our relationship with God and others. Silence can convey almost any feeling: worship, peace, joy, rage, and grief. This month, we look at websites that explore ways to experience a healing, worship-filled silent treatment from God.

www.covchurch.org/cov/resources/shared/silent-retreat-ideas

Right here on the Covenant website there are a number of resources on silent retreats and on incorporating the spiritual discipline of silence into everyday life. At the first web address listed above, you will find a personal reflection on taking an annual silent retreat with God, with ideas on where to go, what to bring, and what to do while you’re there. 

We also have links to three Companion articles on silence and solitude. First, Helen Cepero, director of spiritual formation at North Park Theological Seminary, shares about her experience of  “Finding the Holy in the Ordinary” (July 2001). She writes, “Solitude, unlike loneliness, is not so much about grieving for what is lost, as it is about finding what is lost and celebrating a newfound sense of wholeness.”

From that same issue is the article “Making Time and Space for God,” a reflection by Mark Buchanan on the holy habits of solitude, silence, and secrecy. He writes, “One thought rarely occurs to us: maybe killing dead space is killing me.”
Then from September 2004, Scott Nelson writes on “Spiritual Practices 101: Christian Disciplines for Youth Ministry.” Nelson covers the topics of silence, meditation, lectio divina, observation, thanksgiving, and confession, all with youth groups in mind. He reminds us, “There is so much power in simply spending time with our loving Savior.”

www.monasticdialog.com/bulletins/67/merton.htm

Thomas Merton is one of the more well-known Christian authors who write about the silence of God. This article from Merton, a Catholic monk from the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky, was originally published in 1969 by The Baptist Student, the student newspaper of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

Notable Quote: “Silence has many dimensions. It can be a regression and an escape, a loss of self, or it can be presence, awareness, unification, self-discovery. Negative silence blurs and confuses our identity and we lapse into daydreams or diffuse anxieties. Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we are, who we might be, and the distance between these two. Hence, positive silence implies a disciplined choice, and what Paul Tillich called the ‘courage to be.’ In the long run, the discipline of creative silence demands a certain kind of faith. For when we come face to face with ourselves in the lonely ground of our own being, we confront many questions about the value of our existence, the reality of our commitments, the authenticity of our everyday lives.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence

Wikipedia takes a look at silence from a conceptual point of view. What is silence? Does it exist? Do we underestimate the power of silence? The silence we engage in when we pray is the same silence we use to remember someone’s death in a “moment of silence.” This post talks about silence in gestures and symbols, music, debate, law, and even the effect silence has on humans and animals. So if silence is this powerful, then why do we regard it with such disdain?

Notable Quote: “Prolonged silence can often affect a person’s state of mind, causing them to hear things and talk to themselves to break the silence. Most people find silence uncomfortable, and to the extreme, unbearable. In modern society...when people are meeting and talking to each other, people often start talking nonsense to skip moments of silence.”

www.prayertoday.org/retreats

“Prayer Today Online” is a website created by Richard LaFountain, a Christian and Missionary Alliance minister, to “train God-hungry people in the disciplines of prayer.” The website contains resources for guided prayer and for planning a prayer retreat or a silent retreat. It’s a worthwhile resource to check out.

Notable Quote: “Retreat of silence is a spiritual discipline retreat. It may not seem interesting to a people person until you realize how much people crowd out the Savior.”

www.explorefaith.org/steppingstones_silence.html

People who live alone sometimes wonder what they will “get” from a silent retreat, since they spend much of their time by themselves already. I find that making a commitment to go away, to open myself to God intentionally is different from spending time alone. Being intentional about solitude is what counts. As we know, God is always with us. In turning to God, without words, and allowing ourselves to be aware of God’s constant presence, we begin to see the world, and ourselves, differently.

Notable Quote: “He read aloud: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you....Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.’...God had been waiting to tell me that for a long time and only in the silence could I hear them.”

itotd.com/articles/235/silent-retreats

The website “Interesting Thing of the Day” has an article called “What is a silent retreat?” It’s insightful, and gives both a how-to and a big picture look at silent retreats. 

Notable Quote: “If you look at the comments made by ordinary people who have been on silent retreats, it’s striking how often they say it was a mind-blowing or life-changing event. That the simple act of going without words can affect someone so profoundly shows how unusual silence has become....”