Soul Nourishing Practice: Silence
When was the last time you took an extended amount of time in silence?
And I mean real silence— no podcast on a walk, no music in the car while driving, no movie in the background while cooking dinner or working on a task. No streaming service to fill the time, or doom-scroll before bed, or pages to whisk you away to another world. Just pure silence where you intentionally shut off the sound of the world around you to steep intentionally in this space of curated emptiness?
It’s not often we do this. Our world is created to offer us the steady hum of information, advertisements, entertainment— there’s always something flying towards us at an alarming rate that when we do have a moment of silence, it can feel uncomfortable, unsettling, or like we are missing out on something. FOMO (fear of missing out) is cultivated through the noise of living and the silence makes us fear that we are being left behind.
But what if we reframed silence for the gift it truly is?
What if you could enjoy the spacious silence as the gift of deep rest and deep communion with the One who made you?
Silence is sacred.
It’s the place where we can hear the whispers of the Spirit in our depths. The still, small voice that is there to comfort us, to guide us, to reveal truth to us, to express to us the things we most desire to hear from the One who made us, who loves us, and who delights in us. When we enter into silence, we are putting the ‘do not disturb’ sign on and learning what it is to be available to God alone.
“The discipline of silence invites us to leave behind the competing demands of our outer world behind for time alone with Jesus. Silence offers a way of paying attention to the Spirit of God and what God brings to the surface of our souls.” - Spiritual Disciplines Handbook by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun
It’s through the practice of silence we find ourselves opened up to God in the deepest parts of ourselves that we perhaps didn’t even realize were closed off, we recognize how we are authentically feeling and experiencing ourselves, God, and the world around us, and we perhaps experience a more rich sense of prayer as we leave behind words find comfort and rest in God.
Today, I want to share the practice of Silence with you by way of setting a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and just being with God. The more you spend time in Silence, the more God-Given Fruit can arise: being attentive to the voice of Jesus, freedom from the addition to noise or sound, having deeper intimacy with God, growing in self-awareness as the silence invites the subconscious to move into deeper levels of knowing, developing increased listening skills, and receiving quiet from the chaos and the noise in your life.
This practice of silence gives you a taste of spending time in Silence. Try spending your time of silence inside and outside, try during the morning, afternoon, and evening. Notice how these different spaces and times of day impact your experience.
Silence:
Prepare
Find a space where you can be silent for 10 minutes without interruptions. Maybe that means your bedroom where you can close the door, or finding space outside or in a park. Have something available to you as a timer and set it for 10 minutes. Setting a timer allows you to forget the time as you settle into the quiet.
Presence
Take a moment and, however it feels most authentic to you, acknowledge the Loving Presence of God here with you. Intentionally place yourself within the Loving Presence of God.
Quiet
Become quiet in the Presence of God. Let go of words you feel you might need to use to fill the space and enjoy the quiet. As you become quiet, what do you notice? Do you hear voices, traffic, your breath, the wind, your own heartbeat? Do you notice your thoughts creeping in filled with a to-do list, do you notice the different feelings you experience— grief, joy, sadness, excitement, unsettled at the quiet? Let the noise go. As you notice something, instead of ruminating on it or trying to justify or judge it, practice accepting what arises as part of the quieting down process and then imagine the thought, feeling, sound, etc. drifting away like a cloud in the sky. Let the quiet deepen. Be with God.
A note: Silence is not a time to come up with strategies to fix your life or adjust your to-do list and to reorganize your priorities. Silence is a time to rest in God. Lean into God, trusting that being with God in silence will loosen your rootedness in the world and plant you by streams of living water. It can form your life, even if it doesn’t solve your life.
Reflect
After your timer goes off, take time to reflect on what it was like for you to simply become still enough to hear the background noise that often surrounds us, and the internal that often happens within. What was it like for you to try to let that go and quiet even more? How might you have experienced God during this time? How might God have experienced you during this time?
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As you try to embrace more silence in your life, try this practice of silence multiple times during the day, at different parts and in different settings. Often the benefits of being silent are seen in the fruit it bears rather than in the experience of silence itself— especially in such a short time frame.
If you enjoyed the 10 minutes, try lengthening it to 15, 20 or even 30 minutes! For these longer periods of silence, perhaps you bring forward a prayer to God, then set your timer, and take time sitting in the silence knowing God is holding your prayer with you. Maybe you spend time using your God-given imagination and image God sitting with you in the silence. For extended times of silence of an hour or more, you may enjoy adding in different prayer practices to enhance the silent time, offering additional space of prayer as things unearth from within.