I am a left brained person, very analytical and methodical. For you Meyers Briggs people, my personality type is ISFJ (what is that?). Needless to say, I feel most comfortable and effective when I am solving a problem. I've written about this before, but felt the need to explore deeper into it as part of my Lenten journey.
I recently finished a book called 'The Power of Silence' by Robert Cardinal Sarah. It really challenged my sensibilities, as it strongly advocates for what I would call the 'Anti-Jim'. What I felt it was pushing me to do is to recognize that I use all of the noise in my life as a tool to keep my mind busy so that I do not have to think and reflect on the 'harder' aspects of existence. It helped me to be cognizant of the fact that I continuously and constantly search out problems to be analyzing and thinking about to effectively build a wall with the purpose of keeping out any deeper and more substantial lines of thought.
Basically I have conditioned my inner life to be uncomfortable in silence - what Sarah calls the Suffocation Syndrome - and so when I find myself in the midst of it, or even when I intentionally seek it out as I have been doing this Lent, I am very antsy and uncomfortable. I'm not talking just silence in terms of no exterior noise - I also mean silencing my heart and mind from all the thoughts and gymnastics that can go on in there. For me, its a great Lenten practice.
If you are a reader I highly recommend the book - lots of great messages. If you aren't, below are some of those messages that touched me - maybe they will challenge you also...
"If there is an illness that comes from noise, we would have to call it the suffocation syndrome. I notice it through the experience of candidates who come on retreat. Memories, desires, hurts, and fears of which they are unaware and that lie at the bottom of their souls resurface. In their everyday routine, the constant influx of news, meetings, and various activities have ceaselessly covered up these voices in the depths of their being and allowed them no opportunity to reemerge into consciousness. Silence and solitude reveal them. Since the discovery is not always pleasant, and the one concerned is rather at a loss, he tries to keep them outside the field of consciousness by maintaining the permanent noise that prevents them from becoming manifest."
"The proliferation of information on demand, of sounds and images in the last century or so is stupefying. Man’s sonic and visual landscape no longer has anything in common with that of our grandparents. I imagine that it must take a certain spiritual fortitude to protect oneself from this invasion, not by a wholesale rejection, but by a proper asceticism. Solzhenitsyn rightly remarked that although there is a right to information, there is also a right not to be informed."
"Finally, I wonder whether the voice that the modern world seeks to stifle with incessant noise and movement might not be the one that tells us: “Remember that you are dust and that you will return to dust.” It is a well-known fact that our society characteristically ignores death. It is understandable: Without God, without eternal life, without Christ, and without redemption, how can anyone bear the thought of death?"
"We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noises and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. . . . The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in active life. We need silence to be able to touch souls. The essential thing is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. Jesus is always waiting for us in silence. In this silence he listens to us and speaks to our souls. And there, we will hear his voice. . . . In this silence we find a new energy and a real unity. God’s energy becomes ours, allowing us to perform things well. There is unity of our thoughts with his thoughts, of our prayers with his prayers, of our actions with his actions, of our life with his life."
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