A Presence, Silence Pt. I
How could this be Good News
Several winters ago a friend and I went to the mountains in order to take a sauna. We drove his extreme beater of a car full of wood burning stove, stove pipe, a box of firewood, and an insulated tent to a snowy campground about an hour away from the city. Or was it my beater of a car? Whichever of us drove we were certainly testing the mountain gods’ patience by taking such a vehicle in winter. Twenty plus years old sedans that were low-riding, two-wheel drive, 4-cylinder, rusting away. Both cars are now long ago deceased but they lived lives of adventure beyond what their designers intended.
Since the snow was deep and our intended sauna site down a steep hill we had to leave the car on the side of the road and hike. I tried not to think about the work it would take to pack everything out as we made multiple trips carrying the sauna gear two hundred yards down to the riverside. We built the sauna tent in what I would later learn was a campsite. At the time it just seemed like a flat spot in the snow, tucked between the boulders at the foot of a huge rock outcropping and a creek that had frozen over.
We built a fire in the stove and soon the tent was hot. We got down to our swim trunks–normally we would be naked but hikers might pass by–and began the ritual. Enter the tent and sit on a log or bench. Keep the fire fueled with pieces of waste hardwood from a cabinetry shop. Occasionally pour water to make steam on the hot stones atop the stove. Sweat.
Once we were hot enough we would go outside to cool down. The river was mostly frozen over but there was an opening in the middle and my friend would go to it and immerse himself in the water. I was less gung-ho and would merely sit on the edge with my legs in the water and splash my face. Once we were cool enough we would start over.
With each round of the sauna our conversation became more sparse until, for our final sweat, we sat in silence.
On the drive home we enjoyed the feeling of vitality and the beauty of the mountains and our conversation began anew. I asked my friend what was happening in his interior life and he told me how amazed he was at the grandeur of the story of God. My friend said, “I just think the story is so beautiful. At this point, I wouldn’t even care if it turned out not to be true. I would still believe it because this is the most beautiful story.” He was laughing.
I told him how I was struggling to believe that a God who is so silent could be good or there at all. I said, “The question I’m asking is, how is it Good News that God is silent in the way that he is silent?”
A week or so before I had been driving down the city highway in my beater of a car. I was so angry at God for not talking to me that I wept and screamed until I thought I had done permanent damage to my vocal cords. I yelled at God, “You are terrible at relationships.” The way I felt at the time was that we all know that communication is the foundation of any relationship and yet here I am staking my whole life on a relationship with this God who won’t even answer a simple question or speak a word to me.
I imagine how some of you reading this are responding right now.
“God doesn’t talk because he doesn’t exist. That was your cognitive dissonance catching up to you.” To me, this is the most boring answer.
“Well God gave us the Bible, that should be enough. This conversational relationship with God that you want isn’t a thing.” This answer is the most heartless and sad.
“He probably seemed silent at the time because you were walking in disobedience or just weren’t listening.” This answer begs the question. It is in such a state that I most need God to speak clearly. Also, before committing to this explanation, one should read the book of Job and consider which characters in that story one sounds like when employing it.
“I deny the premise. God does speak. He isn’t silent. He told me such and such this morning and gave me such and such dream last night.” This is the most annoying and challenging answer out of these options. It may offer the greatest chance of helpfulness. But it also reflects a limited understanding of the saints and the pattern of formation their lives reflected. I would venture to say that a struggle with the silence of God is a staple of the Christian way and has been for millennia.
We could go on.
Now, if someone were to bring such a struggle to me–the struggle of the silence of God–I would not hope to give an answer. I would hope to have a little wisdom to share and to ask a few good questions but mostly, I would want to sit in silence with them.
Another friend and I recently met for an hour of silent prayer. We sat in his living room. I was impressed with how engaged my friend seemed when I opened my eyes during our prayer. I glanced around at the details of his space, bounced me knees, tried (failing for a minute) not to fall asleep. I was aware that I probably did not look very contemplative on the outside. When the hour was done I asked him how it was. He said, “Honestly it felt completely empty.” I replied, “Same, but I think I’m learning to encounter God on the other side of the emptiness.” I laughed at how annoyed the version of me driving and weeping in traffic would be at the me that said that.
I recommended a book to him, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise by Cardinal Sarah.
I am happy for the Catholic Church that men like Cardinal Sarah exist and, though I have no real stake in the matter, he would have been my pick for that church’s 266th Pope. The Power of Silence is a fragmentary collection of meditations on God’s silence.
Here are some of my favorite fragments from the book:
2. At the heart of man there is an innate silence, for God abides in the innermost part of every person. God is silence, and this divine silence dwells in man. In God we are inseparably bound up with silence. The Church can affirm that mankind is the daughter of a silent God, for men are the sons of silence.
12. Silence is not an absence. On the contrary, it is the manifestation of a presence, the most intense of all presences. In modern society, silence has come into disrepute; this is the symptom of a serious, worrisome illness. The real questions of life are posed in silence. Our blood flows through our veins without making any noise, and we can hear our heartbeats only in silence.
165. The silence of God is understood by faith, in meditation on the communion that can exist between him and men. The divine silence is a mysterious revelation. God is not insensitive to evil. At first, we may think that God allows evil to destroy men. But if God remains silent, he nonetheless suffers with us from the evil that tears apart and disfigures the earth. If we seek to be with God in silence, we will understand his presence and his love.
174. I can imagine that a person who never prays is incapable of understanding God's silent speech. Nevertheless, when we are lovers, we always notice the slightest gesture of the one whom we love. It is the same with prayer. If we are accustomed to praying often, we can grasp the meaning of God's silence. There are signs that only two fiancés can understand. The person of prayer is also the only one to grasp the silent signs of affection that God sends him.
I don’t believe Cardinal Sarah’s book solves the problem of God’s silence. But his book does make it sweeter. It creates some wiggle room. Whatever the experience of God’s silence is, it is not the kind of thing you solve or the kind of thing you apologize away. A pat answer to the question of God’s silence, even when given in good faith, really misses the point. The pat answer fails to see the space for the gift that it is and attempts to fill it. A little bit like trying to eat a flower bouquet.
This message has taken a very long time to write. I meant to send this in March so it’s almost five months overdue. Much of that delay can certainly be accounted for with failure to prioritize. But a fair amount of that time was spent making many more pages of notes than you would think given the length of this work. And there is something about the thought of God’s silence that, when given a moment, is like getting caught in a mystical tractor beam into God, which makes for lovely meditations if not productive writing sessions.
There could be a book on the other end of this conversation but I have sent this message to you with what may feel like an abrupt ending rather than delaying further. There are so many things the silence of God could be and so many things the experience of it could do in one’s life. So consider this Part 1 of an ongoing series we will return to on occasion.
Maybe God is not silent at all. Maybe his silence is a punishment, a rebuke. Maybe it is an invitation. Maybe God’s silence is romance. Maybe you have never and will never encounter God’s silence or maybe it is a daily suffering you undergo for a season. Maybe it is spiritual warfare or a pollution we are sickened by as people of our time. Maybe it is an evil enchantment or a divine vision. Maybe God’s silence is your deafness and his rescue mission. Maybe God’s silence is emptiness, fullness. Maybe it wounds, maybe it heals.
I know talking about the silence of God is dangerous. There is a risk in talking about silence. It is like walking to a precipice and jumping into what will prove to be either Nothingness or a vast wave of the all in all of Christ. Many faithful Christians would deny the premise entirely, defending God as the one who speaks. On the other hand, many would use talk of God’s silence as an apophatic weapon of deconstruction, seeking the occasion to fill the void with any number of destructive lies.
Let me affirm that I believe God speaks. Jesus is the great Word of God. All creation reveals God. God has spoken to me. God speaks through the scriptures, the Church, the prophets, the stars. What is there that God has not spoken through? But can God speak to you through silence? Can you meet God and be with God in the silence?
Something unlocked for me when I voiced that question to my friend, “How is it Good News that God is silent in the way that he is silent?” Before that moment I had not considered that God might be loving me in this place that hurt so much. I still struggle with God’s silence at times, especially when God is silent in response to a request for physical healing. But mostly, I’ve come to love the moments where I get to experience God’s silence. Everything God does is love because God is love and so, whatever God is doing when he seems silent is love.
Zohar Atkins wrote my favorite poem,
The world answers me at all turns,
But you God, it is your silence I long for.