(Click here to download this as a one page PDF with a planning grid)
Material covered this week
This week we came to the end of the beginning. We have had the opportunity to learn and practice some simple but quite difficult habits that, if we carry on with them, may lead us somewhere deep. Much of this week we spent finishing up on how to take our silent prayer out into the streets. In addition to learning to smile when at rest, we thought about using peripheral vision to broaden and deepen our calm. Then we learnt how never to be bored again by simply looking anything “boring” as what it really is – an opportunity to practice, and to relish, deep, present listening.
All this finds a yet higher expression in the giving of our attention to others. For our silent prayer, though it brings deep joy, is not about us. It is only what it is if we direct it outward in love towards others. Listening can be a gift we give to others.
In the last four days of the book, which we may not already have read, we get finally into the theological and spiritual heart of it. For of course even beyond listening to others, the deepest, highest, most worthwhile listening is listening to God. It is as we listen to God – who, amazingly enough, also listens to us – that we enter into the life of God. For prayer is simply the inner life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in such loving communion that they are one being. Prayer is going on all the time – was going on before the creation of the universe and will outlast it. In true listening silence we can hope to be caught up in it. And thus we may hope, by losing ourselves completely, to find who we truly are.
Questions for reflection
- When you have tried a few times attending to peripheral vision when anxious or in some other negative state – do you notice any effect on your frame of mind?
- What is it, really, that you don’t like about ‘being bored’?
- What are the things in your life that really give you joy, and how did they become part of your life?
- When has someone else really listened to you?
- Think about the many different situations in which you will find yourself in the coming days – how many of them could become better and deeper and more joyful through listening?
- Are you going to keep on with this?
- Are you willing to be obedient to God?
- What do you want God to hear?
- What would it be like to enter into the eternal life of prayer that is God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
- Who do you long to become?
Further prompts for discussion
- Have we been trying this thing of “listening beyond”? – as when we listen to someone else speak as we are saying the psalms together, is it possible, perhaps, for you to think and pray but “hear” God’s prayer? It’s hard to put into words what this would be like, for obvious reasons, but is it something we think possible and worthwhile?
- What do we think of the notion that the whole of the Christian life is a letting go – as in Mark 8, those who lose their lives will gain them, and those who cling onto their lives will lose them? Where else in our lives do we see this happening?
Before silence: “pre-flight checks”
- All the usual things: sit, breathe, listen, here, now, attentive to the body, gentle smile, peripheral vision (with eyes closed), gentle and forgiving with the mind wanders, ready for moments of balance…
- This time, listen beyond – let go of your own thoughts and prayers, be open to entering into the mind and prayer of God, always aware that we don’t know quite what is going on here, but ready for it whatever it is
Season of Silence 