The Deacon's Bench - March, 2010

There’s a story about three hermits who move into a cave together. For the first ten years they don’t speak to one another. Then one day a chicken walks past the mouth of the cave. Ten years later the first hermit says, “I wonder why that chicken came along?” Ten years after that the second hermit says, “It wasn’t a chicken, it was a duck.” Another ten years go by and the third hermit silently starts packing his bags. As he gets up to leave, the other two look at him with raised eyebrows. He turns to them and says, “Look, if all you two are going to do is argue, I’m leaving.”

How are you with silence? As a chaplain in the hospital I’m learning alot about silence. It turns out there are different kinds of silence. For instance, there’s the silence of a room in which people are sleeping. There’s something about them that reminds me of the peaceful beauty of sleeping children. I never wake them – you probably wouldn’t either. Instead, I quietly leave a card for them and vanish without a sound. Theirs is a silence is of peaceful healing and mine is of one of simple respect.

There’s a different kind of silence that emerges when, after introducing ourselves and getting past the routine pleasantries, patients begin to talk about what’s on their mind. Before they go deeper, they study me quietly for a moment. I’m not sure whether they want to see if they can trust me or if they’re tacitly asking for permission to continue. When I’m alert enough to pick up on what’s happening, I gently touch their arm, look at them and say “Tell me about that.” It is an invitation to them to speak and to me to remain silent.

It’s a vocal silence though, much like prayer. The wordless communication isn’t from me – it’s from God. Of that, I am certain. In its own way, that silence says to the patient: “You matter. I am not indifferent to your suffering, and I love you. You can say anything and I will remain calm; I will not judge you.”

Hearts are poured out into that silence. When we’re not interrupted by the normal events that occur in a hospital, the conversation ebbs and flows like the tide coming in and going out. Frequently there are tears. Occasionally they are mine. Sometimes it can happen that I will have said nothing the entire time, yet everything that needed to be said has been said. It’s an instance of the silence of the presence of God.

There are happy kinds of silence, too. When our children were little, we used to take time out every now and then before or after dinner and go around the table so that everyone could say something good about everyone else around the table. The rule was that everyone had to speak, and everyone else had to be silent while anyone else was talking. In this kind of silence we were free to express and to drink in our family’s love for one another.

There are other silences which aren’t life-giving at all. The silences of moodiness, resentment, disdain, contempt and anger bespeak the need for power and control, and of course, the fear that underlies such needs. Such silences are forms of domestic violence. They pull us away from each other and from God, into the self-destructive vortex of sin and narcissism.

How are you with silence? Maybe Lent’s a good time to reflect quietly on how it is with you, and decide whether it’s time to rejoice or repent.