silence, friday

Friday, June 6

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:

Uncrowd my heart, O God,

until silence speaks

in your still small voice;

turn me from the hearing of words,

and the making of words,

and the confusion of much speaking,

to listening,

waiting,

stillness,

silence.

                        ~Thomas Merton

Scripture Reading for the Day: 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

Reading for Reflection:

 

     A second, more positive, meaning of silence is that it protects the inner fire.  Silence guards the inner heat of religious emotions.  This inner heat is the life of the Holy Spirit within us.  Thus, silence is the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive.

     Diadochus of Photiki offers us a very concrete image:  "When the door to a steambath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good.  Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy.  Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy.  Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts. (The Way of the Heart by Henri J.M. Nouwen)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

                                           
Closing Prayer: For you alone, O God, my soul waits in silence; for from you alone comes my salvation.  You alone are my rock and my salvation, you alone are my fortress; I shall not be shaken.  Amen. (Psalm 62:1-2)