Making Room for Silence

Tuesday I will enter grand silence in Snowmass, Colorado. Snowmass is the home of renowned spiritual teacher, priest and monk Thomas Keating and the Trappist monastery, St. Benedict’s. For eight days I will join a group of others committed to Christian contemplative practice. We’ll gather together throughout the day for a total of about 4 hours of centering prayer sits—30 min sits with meditative walks in between. We’ll eat all three vegetarian meals together—in silence. In the evening we’ll gather with the Trappist monks for vespers. Everyday, all day, we will be in silence. No talking, no listening to music, totally unplugged—no cell phones, no internet, no television. For eight days we will detach from our normal, very active lives and let go into the all encompassing presence of God.

Whether during a 20 or 30 minute daily prayer sit, or an extended time of meditation like this retreat, it can be uncomfortable, even terrifying to let go into Silence. But it can also be the most restful, blissful thing one can do. The anxiety and even terror that sometimes surfaces is actually always with us—we’re just usually not conscious of it. In a contemplative prayer sit, the emotions, thoughts and beliefs that regularly keep us from God have opportunity to be released, and the wounds they’ve caused healed.

It’s one thing to proclaim or believe in the Christian principles of yielding to Christ and being transformed by Christ. It’s another to embody those principles in a prayer sit. When we practice yielding to the presence of Christ in a contemplative prayer sit, we are making it possible to embody that practice— that eventually becomes a discipline—in our active life. Becoming better Christians. Doing good better.

I have prepared a short blog for you each day while I’m away to encourage you to create space for silent, contemplative practice yourself. Even if you only have 5 minutes to yield to God, would you join me in letting go into Love? You’ll be so glad you did and the world will be a better place because we did.

Be well friends. Breathe deep.