Several years ago I was sitting with my spiritual director during a time of significant disorder and disruption in my life. She could clearly see I was experiencing a lot of internal dialogue, much of it negative and unhelpful.
While she usually asked questions far more often than she made statements, in this moment, she paused, looked me in the eye, and shared a quote from Richard Rohr.
“Sit in the silence until it silences you.”
Like a toddler in the candy aisle at the grocery store, my inner voice shouted, “No! I don’t want to!” But she sat there, waiting for my inner child to stop the tantrum. After a minute or two, there was more stillness and the opportunity to actually listen to her. That day at the retreat center, I added this phrase to my daily affirmations, a list of things I read every morning. Since then, those words have awaited me every morning. “Sit in the silence until it silences you.”
It would be disingenuous to say that from that moment on I was suddenly able to sit in the silence until it silenced me. Years later, I still often struggle with this practice. But it has gotten easier.
The hardest part of sitting in the silence for me is being patient and resisting the urge to “make noise.” As an Enneagram Seven, in stressful times I often become perfectionistic and self-critical, the voices drowning out so much else around me. My soul aches for something to overpower the noise of the boisterous internal critic and my default is to seek out something else, something more positive, to drown out the critic. This can be a vicious and exhausting cycle.
In those moments where I am able sit long enough, those voices reach the point of exhaustion and begin to quiet. Eventually, they lower to a whisper and then stop speaking. This process is not easy and often unpleasant, but the resulting peace is worth its weight in gold.
When I share this idea of sitting in the silence with others, I often see in their eyes a look similar to what Sister Wanda probably saw in mine. I can’t read minds or know what others are thinking, but the look seems to reflect what I felt: fear, apprehension, and resistance.
What I want to tell them—but know they need to learn by doing, not hearing it from me—is that it is beautiful on the other side of the noise.
The journey to that place of peace is not easy, linear, or immediate. I wasn’t able to complete the journey the first time I tried. Or the second. Or the third. Sometimes I still get stuck in the noise.
Sitting in the silence is a practice, an ongoing effort to build mental and emotional muscle. It has taken me a decade to get to this point and the progress has been so gradual that it took years to finally see how far I had come.
I share this not to applaud my own efforts, but to encourage others to continue theirs. Regardless of where one finds themselves on the journey to peace, remember that true, deep change is one small step at a time and the results are usually not immediate. In a world of instant gratification, real transformation is never instant; it is countless movements forward intermingled with many steps back.
In 1 Kings 19 in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Elijah speaks with YHWH on a mountain. In this divine encounter, Elijah does not meet YHWH in the wind, an earthquake, or a fire. Rather, Elijah meets YHWH in “a sound of sheer silence.”
Like Elijah, we might think more noise will bring peace. We might try scrolling through social media, busying ourselves with activity, bingeing our favorite show, or a myriad of other “noises.” None of these are inherently bad, but we must be careful not to use them to drown out what we don’t want to hear.
The more I have experienced true silence, the more clearly I have heard the voices speaking wholeness and healing. Those voices often speak quietly; making space to hear them has brought me renewal that no noise can drown out.
Breaking Into Peace 