The Sound of Silence
Teachers: Without the virtue of interior silence one cannot hear deeply enough to have anything worthwhile to teach.
The Desert Fathers and the Geography of the Human Heart
“The crown of the monk is humility.” ∼ Abba Orr, Desert Father, fourth century. The Lenten season is well underway and it would be difficult to find devotional writings more aligned with the spirit of Lent than the words of the Desert Fathers. Two volumes come to mind: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, translated by … Read more
Cardinal Sarah Confronts the Dictatorship of Noise
Postmodern man, says Cardinal Sarah, lives on the “sad drug” of noise, which “sickens yet reassures him.” He “gets drunk” on noise to deny reality, to “anesthetize his own atheism.” He’s hooked up to the “morphine pump” of agitation; his eyes “are sick, intoxicated, they can no longer close.” They’re “red” from the flickering screens … Read more
The Age of Noise
More than 70 years ago, the English satirist Aldous Huxley wrote that modernity is the “age of noise.” He was writing about the radio, whose noise, he said “penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions—news items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama … Read more
Hope in the Eternal Word: The Silence of Cardinal Sarah
Earlier this year I completed another silent retreat at a Trappist monastery. Such is the monastic emphasis on respecting silence that retreatants are surrounded by signs that read “Silence spoken here.” Even the refrigerator magnet I bought at the gift shop is emblazoned with this declaration. My mother remains astonished that her talkative son was … Read more
Seeking God in the Silence
“Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence…” ∼ T.S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday One of the truly awful torments of modern life, from whose myriad aggressions no one is entirely safe, is noise. More and more, it fills the space that was once marked by that silence … Read more
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Silence and Culture at a Carthusian Monastery
When the film Into Great Silence came out in American theatres back in 2007, a student of mine, who is a high school religion teacher, took some of his students to see it. They had to leave about half way through. The students, accustomed to fast paced entertainment, couldn’t handle the presentation of the life … Read more