[26 April 2019]
Two years ago, instead of giving up sweets or swearing or social media for Lent, I decided to try something different. I decided to give up any form of digital media that was only going to entertain me. In other words, Game Boys and TV on my commute and headphones were out; movie nights and dance parties were in.
Lent itself is a time of silence. It is a season without the normal liturgical “alleluias.” In some churches, Lent is a time without instrumentation or even, occasionally, music. In the space created by these absences, we are better poised to consider the mystery of Christ and ourselves in relation thereto.
My thought process, then, was something like this: Lent is (in part) about giving something up in order to create space and cultivate awareness for something else; therefore, what better way to get in the spirit of things than by creating a lot of room for silence? But I had never considered using the Lenten fast as an extended time of personal silence. The thought was daunting, to say the least.
Silence and I have had a rocky relationship for as long as I can remember. My friends and family joke, not without merit, that it’s a rare thing to find me sitting still – not talking on the phone, not listening to my latest J-Pop obsession, not at the very least pacing back and forth trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. I don’t like to sit still; I’m a nervous talker (my mom says I got it from grandma), or at least a nervous listener – if people aren’t talking to me or with me or at least laughing at me, I start to panic. Am I doing something wrong? What are you thinking? Are you thinking about me? Are you upset at me? Did I do something wrong? If I didn’t do something wrong, why aren’t you smiling at me? What do I need to do to get your eyes on me?
I first discovered this my first year at university. I took an entire class dedicated to the (gay!) Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. My professor was an experiential educator: he believed that students learned best by doing. Hopkins was a Jesuit and consequently was expected to maintain extended periods of silence. Therefore, my professor, educator extraordinaire that he was, thought it would be a good idea for us to take our own times of silence – a minimum of 24 hours – and see what insights it brought into our understanding of Hopkins and his work.
When my professor gave us this assignment, I remember my stomach dropped. 24 hours of silence? At minimum? Is this even possible? I began to sink into my seat, wondering if it was too late to withdraw from the class (unfortunately, it was). Meanwhile, a buzz was going around the classroom. “24 hours of silence?” my excited classmates started whispering amongst themselves. “This is the best assignment I’ve ever had,” someone next to me said to his friend. I looked around in a mixture of awe and horror. I distinctly remember asking myself, “Are all English majors introverts?”
This silence was to be absolutely free of any and all distractions: no friends, no music, no TV – for 24 hours, it all had to go. ENG 237 was determined to be the ruin of me.
As I sat in my friends’ room, loaded up with enough PB&Js to survive an apocalypse and secretly hoping they’d come back from spring break early so I’d have an excuse to break my temporary vow of silence, I kept the lights off and left the blinds closed. I wasn’t even miserable – I was beyond miserable. I was utterly devastated.
Up to this point, my time at uni had been marked by a frantic, frenetic flurry of activity. I was everywhere at all once, doing everything at all once, trying to meet everyone and get involved in everything and maintain grades and work and keep up with my family and on and on and on until I would crash every night with this sinking, gnawing feeling that I wasn’t doing enough and would wake up every morning instantly wired and determined to make up for all the time I had wasted by sleeping. I believed that a moment without action was a moment lost – that somehow, if I stopped doing, I would lose out on something significant (what exactly that significant thing was a bit vague and elusive, but the fear was overpowering). But the darkest part of that mindset told me that my relationships needed constant, moment-by-moment maintenance; I believed that if I didn’t spend every moment possible sustaining and investing in my relationships, they would fail.
And so I sat down in the dark room with no light and no, wholly convinced that I was ruining my chances for any opportunities and that I was destroying all the relationships I had worked so hard to build – all this for the sake of an assignment.
And so I cried. I cried and I cried and I cried.
In the end, I couldn’t do it. I lasted for about 8 hours (14.5 if you include my sleeping from the night before) before I broke my silence.
But I had learned something.
When my silence was over, I walked down the hall into a friend’s room. He was sitting on the couch, playing video games, probably exactly where I had left him approximately 14.5 hours before. He looked at me, mumbled some sort of a greeting, and passed me a controller. A couple other guys walked in, we mumbled some sort of greeting to them, and passed them controllers. We played video games, ate cheese puffs, talked, laughed, and went on with our days. And nothing out of the ordinary happened. And this was, perhaps, the most extraordinary revelation for me: I didn’t need to spend my life filling a perceived void in order to make my life feel meaningful. My friends didn’t ask me where I’d be or what I’d been up to the past few hours; they didn’t walk away from me; they were not upset at me; I didn’t miss out on anything crucial; no incredibly, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities sprung upon my friend group while I was away; to be frank, they hadn’t even noticed I was absent. Silence taught me an invaluable lesson: I wasn’t nearly as important as I thought I was.
I’ve since spent the next few years taming that monster, with some seasons being more successful than others. I’ve tried to fall in love with silence and I’ve learned a lot about it.
Silence takes many forms. I’ve come to see this more clearly over the years.
I have known silence to be a form of hiding. Deceptively masking yourself, your true thoughts and intentions, by choosing to remain quiet and allowing others to think untruths. I am guilty of this.
I have known silence to be a form of evasion. Fearfully running from a person or a situation you felt you couldn’t handle, hoping that, if you just faded out, you might be forgotten and your nagging guilt would somehow disappear, too. I am guilty of this.
I have known silence to be a weapon. Obstinately, defiantly ignoring someone you care about, even to their face, because you want to make a point or hurt them or make them feel how you feel. I am guilty of this.
A few years ago, this is all I knew of silence: the dark side, the side of hurt and fear and pain, the things you cannot speak for fear of bringing them into the light.
But, as I have lived my life, I have come to see another side to silence.
Another lap around the prayer labyrinth, releasing and surrendering your thoughts to God.
A night on a grassy hilltop: denim jackets and autumn skies and watching the stars.
Comfortable silence with piña coladas shared amongst good friends who have nothing to hide and nothing to prove.
The hush after a piece is performed just before the applause.
Lying next to the one you love – not knowing if he’s awake or asleep, but simply feeling his chest rise and fall with each breath.
I have experienced all this.
Just as I have known silence to wound, I have also known silence to be an agent of healing, of reconciliation, of peace; to speak words deeper and louder and truer than any voice could proclaim. Silence has taught me something new: I am so much more important than I ever thought I could be. Silence has given me the space to sit with myself and to sit with others – bringing our whole selves to the table and being able to see each other for who we are.
I have learned that silence is the point of infinite potential, where everything is possible because anything could be in the next moment. Silence is the point where you see again, perhaps for first time, that everything you have is right in front of you. I learned, or have started to learn, that – not every moment needs to be filled. Just as opportunities and relationships are made in the doing, so also are they cultivated, transformed, refined, and purified in the silence.
Needless to say, my experience with Lent two years ago was challenging and sweet. And so, this year, I decided to repeat it, to similar effect. And now we find ourselves on the Resurrection side of Lent, where our 40-some-odd days of silence have ended in wild cheers and a joyous shout and we have all gone back to our sweets and swearing and social media with renewed vigour, appreciation, and gusto. And, once the Easter “alleluias” have passed and the initial spark begins to fade, we settle once more into a rhythm of silence and speaking, silence and speaking, silence and speaking – watching the world around us grow and shift and shape and mend as we are swept up along with it into the grand project of renewal and restoration of all things.
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