“Don’t ask me to be silent. I can’t. I need to talk. I can’t understand what value ‘silence’ has in my life.”
This is the response we hear from a few of the guests who come the first time to Stillpoint House of Prayer. Our House of Prayer has the trademark of being a place of silence. We do not encourage or allow persons who come to interact with one another because everyone who crosses our thresholds has come for the silence we all hold sacred.
Our world has become a noisy place, full of inner and outer distractions, clutter and chatter. Our affluence and technological atmosphere dulls our environment to the world of transcendence, the Divine. Yet people hunger and thirst for the sacred. Once a person has allowed themselves to enter the silence and even grow gradually to be at home with it, they usually are amazed how clear their thinking becomes, how relaxed they begin to feel and how the stresses they brought with them begin to fall away.
When we begin to quiet our inner chatter, and learn to listen to our better selves and to God who usually is knocking at the door of our heart, we experience being enfolded in peace and love. In this setting, a person has no distractions of television, phones (unless your own), no responsibilities, so that the ongoing silence has a way of gently seizing us so as to open us. What comes into our minds and hearts is often nourishing, feeding us and blessing us with peace and the sacred energy of a loving God.
One busy woman who set aside a weekend to come to Stillpoint to be silent told us on leaving that she came apprehensive and fearful. She thanked us for the opportunity of being with us. “I was amazed at how still I became and I liked it. One other benefit, she claims, “This atmosphere freed me the tyranny of technology. I go away so refreshed.”
If you have never given yourself a ‘silent break’ try it sometime soon in the space of your own home. You’ll realize how silence is golden.
Sr. Elizabeth Berrigan c.s.j. http://www.stillpoint.ca/ and www.csjcanada.org/retreat-opportunities