WLSU: Silent Conversion

My relationship with silence is complicated. I know silence is important. I know it’s healthy. I know silence is conducive to prayer and meditation, to peace and reflection. I also just really like noise of all kinds. I like the sound of things happening, I like hearing people talking. Even when they’re not talking to me: I like to go places where people are talking to each other and just hear different voices and snippets of different conversations. I love all accents – even the ones you think are ugly.

Mostly I love music. It is playing most of the time I am awake, and even when at bedtime I often play music very quietly. My entire sophomore year of college my roommate and I fell asleep to the same album every night. It was Bob Dylan’s World Gone Wrong.

I would not say I’m afraid of silence – at least I don’t think I am. I even enjoy it sometimes. But I forget about it. I forget silence is an option.

I think I’m about to remember. As you are reading this I am on sabbatical. Don’t worry: I’m not working. I wrote this before I left. But the very first thing I’m doing during this sabbatical is going on a 4-day silent retreat. Four whole days without talking to anyone or listening to anyone. No kids around. No spouse. No work. No music. I will be at a monastery and retreat center in Kentucky called The Abbey of Gethsemani. It is run by Cistercian monks who are apparently very serious about their silence. It’s going to be very quiet.

Maybe I am actually a little afraid.

In the Biblical book of 1Kings the prophet Elijah gets to see God. The story goes that Elijah is hiding in the wilderness and God tells him to go out of his cave and wait and God will show up. Then a great wind picks up, so strong that it is splitting boulders apart. But, the narrator says, God was not in the wind. Then there is an earthquake. But, the narrator says, God was not in the earthquake. Then there is a fire, but, you guessed it, no God. After the fire there comes sheer silence. And Elijah knows God is there.

Introverts love this story. Contemplatives too. I am convinced that contemplatives are just spiritually-minded introverts, but that is a conversation for another time. Introverted Christians quote “God is in the silence” more than I quote Dylan. And the thing is I’m sure they’re right. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. It is worth noting that nobody is making me do this. I am going on silent retreat of my own terrible accord.

Part of this is for practical reasons. Historically, the first two days of any vacation I take, I am a miserable wreck of a person. I am cranky and low and disoriented. I feel useless and aimless. I can’t stop thinking about the things I should’ve done before I left work. I snap at my wife and grump at my children and yell at the dogs and blame the world for existing. I am irredeemable for at least 48 hours. And that’s just on a normal break from work. This time I’ll be off work for four months. Chances are I’m going to be a disaster these first few days. And I have decided to spare the family and the dogs from whatever that looks like.

But also, as uncomfortable and as scared as I am, I am craving this silence. I can feel myself wanting quiet. The most liberating part of it is that I have no idea what it will do to me.Not a clue.

I have written in the past about conversion, and about different types of conversion. I want to acknowledge again that I know this language is not typical to the way Episcopalians talk about our faith, about our spiritual experience, about our beliefs. We shy away often from the conversation about conversion because we tend to think it is the sole territory of Christians who want to know when you were saved or when you found Jesus. And most Episcopalians know that we were saved 2000 years ago on a Friday, and that Jesus hasn’t been hiding but has been with us in communion and community all this time.

Conversion is the transformation of your heart such that it is oriented toward the love for which you were made. You were made from love and you were made for love, because you were made by the God who is Love. And you forget that sometimes. I forget it too. Much of our lives are lived as if we are made for something else. Conversion is the work that God is doing to remind you of the foundational truth of your belovedness, of your primary orientation.

So conversion is a lifelong process. Sometimes there are events we might call conversion experiences: Specific memorable moments that stand out as revelatory and life-changing. People like me need these big moments because I lack subtlety and need Jesus to hit me over the head with love before I believe it’s real. More often though, conversion is ongoing and unnoticeable – like the way the waves shape the rocks on the seashore.

What occurs to me now is that maybe those moments we see as big conversion events were actually just the moments when God shows us the work that has been going on under the surface all along. God has been placing love in my life and I have not always been willing or able to see it.

What does any of this have to do with silence? Everything, I think. Because it takes silence to notice. Music and talking and laughter and wailing and even lawnmowers and barking dogs and traffic are all beautiful noises that make up the soundtrack of my life. And by the way God is in all of them, and you can tell Elijah I said so. Just the same, it can get loud and distracting. It can keep me from paying attention to where the love is. I have no problem finding God in the whirlwind. Sometimes I forget they’re at home in the silence too.

And I am hoping for some quiet for just that reason. I want to pay attention to my conversion.