A Challenge to the Pattern

Last week was full and full-on. I have wanted to train as a Mental Health First Aider for some time, so my study leave seemed like a good time to do it. Last week I did the youth training and this week I am doing the adult training.

I know the week would be intense and intensive. It touched on difficult subjects and ones that have impacted my own life and that of my family. I knew the course was going to involve long days of learning, but what I hadn't prepared myself for was the emotional cost of the subject matter. That isn't the point of this post.

I mused on Twitter earlier what had begun to form as a question - how do I hold this new routine of practicing silence back in the midst of normal life?

I managed to maintain Morning Prayer each day with an extended period of silence in the early part of the liturgy. In many ways, as I look back at the week, that silence sustained me. It was also interesting that a number of people on the course with me were intrigued to discover how I was exploring silence as a spiritual discipline and as a resource in our wellbeing so stayed on at the end of one day's learning to hear about what I was doing.

As the week went on, the pattern of Prayer Durin the Day, Evening Prayer and Compline, which I had begun to develop and had found so life-giving the week before, was stretched and flexed. I felt really bad that the new thing that I had begun, had been so easily challenged in the early stages of my practice and experience. It made me reflect on the negative impact of stress on my spiritual life and how one should feed the other for the good.

As I reflected further, I mused in my notebook,

'...It's so easy to be seduced away from the routines of silence and formation by the colour and noise of contemporary living. It's addictive - it calls to us physically and we are sated by it, high on it, numbed by it. I don't have to focus on me, on my own self and my inner needs because they are constantly being wooed by lights, music, an overload of the senses. Drugged, high on it. There is an inability to focus 

 Silence opens us up to allow an inner focus; to the possibility of all that the cultural noise promises, with its gaudy portrayal of happiness, contentment, instead to peace, joy and hope. To God...'

I wouldn't normally view things quite so dialectically. I normally subscribe to a kingdom view of culture which says that God is present in the world and is revealed and present in and through culture. It made me muse further. I needed to reconcile my longing to practice silence with my love of contemporary culture and a reconcilliation that I will continue to live in this world.

My tweet drew a number of responses - sitting in church for an hour in the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament; walking around the beautiful Aquadrome locally; explore the life of  the Nazareth Community.

A wise friend, Sr Catherine Wybourne (@digitalnun) replied,

'...You have just discovered why monastic communities are usually quite austere in their use of visual and aural media. Here we limit time for listening to music, very rarely watch a video. That's becos otherwise we get sensory overload...'

Going forward, with all of this in mind, there are a number of  things I will need to mull over further as I experiment and practice:

1, Build resilience

During the week, morning prayer inc. 10 minutes of silence following the opening prayer. How do I maintain that when saying the office normally with others? Where does that lengthy silence find a home? Where else can I invite others to partake in it?

2. Be flexible

I've formed my practice centred on Morning Prayer. If I have a full day, where can I find the opportunities to make silence in the day in other ways, especially using breathing exercises focussed on lectio divina or the Jesus Prayer or the listening exercise I've begun to use?

3. Be forgiving

I've found myself feeling frustrated that the midday office and especially night prayer have been flexed this last week. When forming a new routine I've found in the past that I need to be fastidious in keeping the patterns I hope to embed. That said, I have found that encountering God in silence in these early days has been marked by grace and peace. I need to be gracious and forgiving with myself if there is flex in my praxis if silence is to be a life0giving spiritual discipline going forward.