Posted: August 23, 2023   •   Posted in: Reflections

Faith in silence

Coming to trust and surrender to our Higher Power is the work of a lifetime.  Just begin.  And each day commit to beginning again.’ Richard Rohr

After I was introduced to Quakers over 10 years ago I went to Meeting for Worship on Sundays on a regular basis.  However I confess for the first few years I often wondered why I was there.  Other people seemed comfortable with the silence and content in their faith.  What was going on during that hour of worship?   I thought perhaps I was missing something and I could discern no obvious changes in my life (I’m not sure what I was expecting; perhaps a strengthening of faith or a greater sense of peace?).

To fill in the gaps I did a bit of reading and signed up for some events, both Quaker and non-Quaker, which is how I ended up on a day’s workshop on the Christian mystics led by James Finley.  Finley is a member of the teaching faculty at the Centre for Action and Contemplation in America that introduces seekers to the Christian contemplative path.  A Catholic, he entered the  monastery in Kentucky where his spiritual teacher was the contemplative and writer, Thomas Merton.

I bought James Finley’s book ‘The Contemplative Heart’ at the workshop and it’s proved to be a book I am happy to re-read. (However please don’t rush out and order it because it may not resonate with you at all and you will have wasted your money!) In the book Finley reflects on how hard it is to live any kind of contemplative life amidst the busyness of everyday life.  The reason we attempt it at all is, he suggests, because of the fleeting glimpses we are all afforded of something beyond the everyday.  In describing this he quotes a passage from Thomas Merton’s book ‘Seeds of Contemplation’.

‘When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash – at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the ‘newness’, the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance’.

These moments, if we do not let them slip by, give us a brief sense of what Finley refers to as the ‘divinity of what just is’.  Anyone on a contemplative path of whatever religious denomination shares a fundamental belief that it is through quiet sitting that such awareness develops and that a relationship with the divine is nurtured. George Fox said ‘’Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit’. The Buddha said ‘Quiet the mind and the soul will speak’.  Psalm 46 asks us to ‘Be still and know that I am God’.

But it is not easy amidst the hustle and bustle of an ordinary life.  The process may be gradual and subtle, not a sudden parting of the clouds.  There will still be pain, suffering and loss.  Essentially we need to have faith.

So if, like me, you sometimes feel that spiritually you are ‘getting nowhere’, don’t research yet another book or podcast.  Take 10 minutes to sit in stillness and quieten your mind.  And if at the end of that ten minutes you’ve got no further than your ‘to-do list’, then you are not alone, my friend.  But don’t reproach yourself.  Simply stand up and get along with your life.  Just resolve to try another 10 minutes tomorrow.  And remember that flock of birds – God is everywhere.

Alison (Beccles Quakers)