THOUGHTS TO PONDER

I am a member of a gym. There is no virtue per se in the statement. There must, however, be recognition on some celestial balance-sheet for the pain endured on the hi-tech machines, or the aching limbs resulting from a sustained effort in the swimming pool. The immediate reward for me is a stint in the steam room – a peaceful escape from just about everything. Bliss! Unless, that is, people come in and talk! I disapprove of conversation in a steam room as surely as of mobile phones in public places. Why are we so very afraid of silence?

Some years ago I was on a week-long silent retreat with the Jesuits. A wonderful opportunity to become more centred, more connected with aspects of life which are important to me, but which easily get out of focus in day- to- day busyness. A place to find the re-start button again… My young niece, then aged eight, on hearing that I was ‘in silence’, and concerned that we would miss our usual telephone chat, asked her mother if she could phone and before I spoke she’d say:’ Just tap the phone once for yes, and twice for no, and I’ll do the talking!!’

If Lent is, for us, a time of preparation for the feast of Easter, then it must surely involve some ponder- time. I think that may be easier for introverts then more extroverted types. Whether it’s as I get older, or the world gets crazier, or the fact that more and more we are surrounded by noise, I fear we are in danger of losing the capacity to ‘be still and know’, for I’m not sure that there really is any other way to know. The kind of knowing that the mystics and the contemplatives begin to grasp is deeper than any words for it touches the inexpressible.

My gentle Irish mother kept a ‘blue book’ in which she recorded her favourite quotations. This one, about the importance of silence speaks volumes:

‘Face to face personal encounter - true friendship - flourishes in silence. Man was redeemed in silence, during the three hours on the cross, broken only by a few arrow prayers or sentences of comfort to others….We know that serious things have to be done in silence. In silence men love, pray, listen, compose, operate surgically, paint, write, think and suffer. These experiences are all occasions of giving and receiving, of some encounter with forces which are inexhaustible and independent of us….’

I love the story of the old black woman, who on being asked why she spent so much time in an otherwise empty church said: ’I just looks at Him, and He looks at me.’ She had, I think, touched the heart of Easter.

Mary McMahon