Holy Week and Silence

This past Sunday I had one of my most powerful experiences yet at St. Paul's. Palm Sunday is always one of the strongest services at St. Paul's. The liturgy, the music and the time of year always seem to make us all particularly spiritually alert.

This year, as has often been our custom, we had the passion narrative at the ten o'clock service read by a group of people. Kay, Tenesa, Chris and Dennis did a very fine job of reading the various parts within the Matthew's account of the last full day of Jesus' pre-resurrection life.

At the end, the four readers returned with dignity to their places and we entered into what I assumed would be our customary one minute of silence. As we held the silence together, I felt a deep shift going on in the congregation. As I sat still in the quiet, I remembered words of a contemporary spiritual teacher, Margaret Ross. She claimed the we all carry within us a hunger for silence that we hide even from ourselves. I remembered also words of an ancient teacher, Meister Eckhart, who wrote 'God's first language is silence, the rest is translation.'

And so I held the silence longer than usual. There were quite a few children in the congregation, which made the silence and stillness all the more remarkable. There was a part of me that happily could have held that silence for a full ten minutes. After a time, perhaps just over two minutes, I broke the silence to say prayers. I know that we had been to a deep place together and had been there long enough to acknowledge it.

It means an enormous amount to me that I am in a community that is learning the ancient art of keeping silence. It is one of the most sure and primal ways to God, and in our noisy world, the thirst for silence must only increase. How valuable it is to be a people who know and love silence! Thanks be to God for leading us to this state where we might begin to listen to Him more clearly.