Developing a Quiet Center
Sermon
Facing the Future with Hope
Cycle B Gospel Text Sermons for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
Kathleen Norris tells of an experiment she tried with elementary school children when she taught art. She told them first they get a chance to make noise and then they will make silence.
"The rules for noise were simple: when I raise my hand, I told them, you make all the noise you can while sitting at your desk, using your mouth, hands, and feet. The kid's eyes would grow wide -- and the teacher's as well -- so I'd add, the important thing is that when I lower my hand, you have to stop."
Kathleen was surprised the school principals didn't come, but she said the roar only lasted a few seconds and the principals probably thought they were imagining the whole thing.
"The rules for silence were equally simple. Don't hold your breath and make funny faces. I learned to say, as this is how third graders typically imagine silence. Just breathe normally but quietly: the only hard thing is to sit so still that you make no noise at all. We always had to try this more than once. A pencil would roll down someone's desk, or someone would shift in a seat. But in every case but one, over many years, I found that children were able to become so still that silence became a presence in the classroom."1
If it would only be this easy to recover silence in the midst of the noise in our larger society, how much better life would be.
Today we have Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, and iPhones, all of which serve useful and valuable services, especially in the time of emergency. But do we have to be "connected" with people all the time? Don't we need to develop a "quiet center" apart from our busy, hectic, and noisy world so that we can lessen our stress and get in touch with our inner life?
Mark in his gospel depicts Jesus as a man of action. His whole gospel focuses not on what Jesus said but more on what he did. In the very first chapter Mark describes Jesus healing people who are suffering, casting out demons, replying to impatient disciples, traveling from town to town, and proclaiming the good news in one synagogue after another. Then right smack in the middle of these sentences loaded with action -- our text for today -- we find these quiet words: "In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed" (Mark 1:35).
Not only on this occasion, but throughout Jesus' brief ministry he took time to go apart to a quiet place, especially before important events he sought communion with God. For example, after his baptism, before he began his ministry he went off into the desert for forty days. Jesus took three of his most trusted disciples to a lonely mountaintop where he was transfigured. After the Last Supper Jesus led his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane where he prayed alone in quiet while his disciples slept.
Again and again Jesus went away to some solitary place, far from the activity of people. He kept the channels open so that he could experience God's fellowship, guidance, and power. He did not always feel the need to be doing something. He did not always have to be useful.
In the Taoist tradition there is a story about a carpenter and his apprentice and an old tree. A carpenter and his apprentice one day were walking through the forest and they came upon a tall, huge, gnarled, old, beautiful oak tree. The carpenter asked the apprentice, "Do you know why this tree is so tall, so huge, so gnarled, so old, and so beautiful?" The apprentice responded, "No… why?" The carpenter explained, "because it is useless. If it had been useful, it would have been cut down long ago and made into tables and chairs, but because it is useless it could grow so tall and so beautiful that you can sit in its shade and relax."2
We all need to take some time away from being useful so that we can grow old freely without being preoccupied with doing something. But how do we go about developing a quiet center?
Jesus gives us clues in this brief description of his own quiet center.
First of all, we need to set aside a certain time.
For Jesus, in this instance, it was in the morning. And the early morning hours continue to be a favorite time for his followers to commune with God in prayer as they seek to start the day conscious of God's presence. Other people may find the noon hour a good break in the day's activities for quiet time. Still others prefer the evening after the busy day is over to find quiet time. A lot depends on our temperament, or our work schedule, or our age. There is no one absolute, perfect time. We must all find the time that suits us best.
Arthur Paul Boers, a Mennonite scholar who has found helpful the classical "Morning and Evening Hours of Prayers," writes: These regular prayers keep reminding me that God is present, at work, and reliable. Thus such prayers call me to pay attention and to trust that God is active even when I cannot discern God's activity for a long, long time."3
I have always admired the painting by Millet called "The Angelus." He pictures a peasant couple bowing in prayer. They had just heard the Angelus bells ringing from the church bell tower in the village. They have stopped their work in the field. They pause for a moment of silent prayer to reconnect their lives to God. The strain and bitterness leave their souls and their troubles as well and their work is seen in a new light.
Through the years I have loved the sound of bells. They remind me to cease what I am doing and for a moment center my thoughts. When I hear our church bell ring five minutes before worship it reminds me it is stop time, it is "catch my breath" time; it is time to be grateful to God; it is time to restore the rhythm of life between work and rest.
Then there is the matter of place. Where is the best place for a quiet center? For Jesus it was a "deserted place" apart from the crowds. On occasion that "deserted place" was in a garden, on a mountaintop, or in the desert itself.
What works for me is sitting in my favorite chair early each morning before the day's work begins. This practice enables me to center down and reminds me to be attentive to God. Some days the quiet time consists of fifteen minutes, other times it is longer or shorter. But I know it if I do not spend this time alone. I might add that this is not a time for planning the day's schedule. I have a tendency of doing too much planning and I have to constantly check myself. No, this not a time to plan anything but simply to listen to what God might have to say to me.
What about method in developing our quiet center? Jesus does not say very much about method or methods. We do not know exactly how he prayed and made contact with God. His followers have used a variety of methods in order to keep in contact with God.
There is no one method that is the only method as Teresa A. Blythe suggests from the title of her recent book, 50 Ways to Pray. Blythe says: "Like many Protestant Christians, I grew up thinking there was only one way to pray… It wasn't until I met a spiritual director in the late 1980s that I was invited to pray in new and different ways."4
Some Christians rely heavily on silence. Just being alone with God in the silence without any elaborate form of prayer to follow is enough for many people.
Chaim Potok in his fascinating novel, The Chosen, tells the story of two Jewish boys from totally different backgrounds who come together because of their common love of baseball. The one boy is from the strict Hasidic home of a rabbi where silence, meditation, and prayer are taken for granted. The other boy is from a family of Reform Jews who are liberal, rational, and sophisticated. The Hasidic boy tries to explain what silence means to him: "You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. I can hear it."5
Could we have such an experience? We could experiment a few minutes each day in a solitary place, centering down, and listening to God. If we did that, we might never be the same.
I know it is not easy to do. No sooner do we attempt to be silent then countless distractions appear. When will I have time to prepare the meal? We worry about our next doctor's appointment. We think of all the work that is left unfinished.
In order to counteract these distractions a variety of techniques have been developed. We might pay attention to our breathing. Inhale slowly. Then exhale. Breathe in good thoughts; exhale bad thoughts. Another way to center down is to repeat a word or phrase over and over again as we descend into the silence. For some people any word will do as a mantra, but for Christians a verse of scripture seems more appropriate, for example, "Be still, and know that I am God…" (Psalm 46:10).
Another way of combating distractions while attempting to remain in the silence is to incorporate the distraction into the silence itself, make it a part of your prayer to God.
Another method that may be used in developing a quiet center is to pray for others, to engage in intercessory prayer. Scientists constantly remind us today in our "postmodern" age that the universe is "interconnected." We are surrounded by fields of invisible energy. Likewise, in human relationships no one lives alone, but we are caught up in a spider's web of connections. We can and do influence each other. Although intercessory prayer remains a mystery in just how it works, we know that Jesus set the example in praying for others, and the apostle Paul reminds us that even today the Spirit prays through us "with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26). When we pray for others we are only adding to the cosmic love of God who cares. Healing takes place in intercessory prayer -- it may be physical healing, or emotional healing, or spiritual healing. It is not always physical healing but God's healing presence is exhibited in some way when we pray for others.
In fourteenth-century England it was not uncommon for a small group of women to settle in a room at the base of some church and give themselves to intercessory prayer on behalf of the church and its members. They were called "anchorites." Indeed, they were anchors who held the church together amidst the storms and struggles of their day.
We too need "anchorites" in our own time, men and women, young and old, active and homebound -- who are willing to pray passionately for our own congregation. What higher calling could we have than to be used to channel God's loving power to others?
The methods used in a quiet center are numerous today, but one other one should be mentioned. It goes by an ancient Latin title, Lectio Divina, which plainly means "spiritual reading" or "sacred reading." This approach uses prayer and the Bible, in fact it consists of four main elements: lectio (reading), mediatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation).
We begin with reading. We choose some portion of scripture and begin with a time of silence. We open our hearts to God to see what God has to say to us. God's word is first and then we respond to the word. It is helpful to read the scripture passage aloud. Also, reading is best done if the scripture selection is not too long, just a few verses will do.
Next we engage in meditation. We linger over the text. We might concentrate on only part of the scriptures assigned, possible only a verse, or a phrase, or even a word. We can take as much time as we need. We can be like a cow chewing his cud. All too often we read the scriptures quickly without letting the words sink deeply into our very being. In a word, we ruminate over the text, perhaps repeating it again and again like a mantra.
We then proceed to prayer. We open our hearts to God and articulate our deepest feelings in the light of the word of the scriptures that we are wrestling with in our innermost being. Our prayers interact with God's word. We express how this word that we have been meditating upon connects with our own life in some specific way. If we are having difficulty in expressing ourselves in prayer, we can find no better resource than the book of Psalms to guide us. The Psalms speak to us of every human emotion. The Psalms provide us with the words to respond to God's word, and even more importantly, they confront us with the real world and not a dream world in which we would like to live.
Finally, we come to contemplation. There is much misunderstanding over this word. We may conjure up monks and nuns who live apart from normal everyday living praying all the time. We who have responsibilities of family life and go to the workplace daily do not have this luxury, valuable as the work the monastic orders do provide for us all.
Contemplation as it is usually is understood in Lectio Divina is something far more practical. After we have read, meditated, and prayed, we contemplate all that we have done to the totality of our lives. We do this, however, with a newly gained consciousness of God with us in all that we do. In other words, to contemplate does not mean retreating from the world; on the contrary it means living what we have just read, meditated upon, and prayed. We might add that contemplation is not just for a select few but for everyone seeking to develop a quiet center. One of the best definitions I have heard of contemplation is "Contemplation means living what we read, not wasting any of it or hoarding any of it, but using it up in living."6
I know of one group who calls themselves the C.I.A., "Contemplatives in Action," not a bad name for those people who have captured the essential meaning of contemplation.
Robert Russell, once a professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in his autobiography titled To Catch an Angel, tells of his love of fishing along the St. Lawrence River. He had a cottage on one of the Thousand Islands. The fact that he is blind complicates his fishing. He explains how he does it:
So that I can go out by myself, whenever I please, I have run a wire down to the end of the dock, where I have mounted a large electric bell. Before I go down to the dock, I plug the line into an outlet in the house. A timing device permits the bell to ring once every thirty seconds. If I row too far upwind to be able to hear the bell, I can still fish without anxiety because I can drift downwind and then I am again in touch with my base.
Russell goes on to add:
And a man needs a base to quest from and needs the sense that, however, far he has strayed, return is still possible.… The river lies before me, a constant invitation, a constant challenge, and my bell is the thread of sound along which I return. To a quiet base.7
We all are in a way like that blind man on the river. God has called us on a journey, out on the river, to go with the flow, but not to forget our quiet base and to return to it often to reset our bearings before continuing again.
The way to silence our noisy hearts in the hectic environment in which we live today is developing a quiet center. Amen.
__________
1. Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: River-head Book, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998), 16-17.
2. Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1974), 22-23.
3. Arthur Paul Boers, The Rhythm of God's Grace (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2003), xix.
4. Teresa A. Blythe, 50 Ways to Pray: Practices from Many Traditions and Times (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 11.
5. Chaim Potok, The Chosen (New York: Fawcett Crest, published by Ballatine Books, 1967), 249.
6. Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 113.
7. Robert Russell, To Catch an Angel (New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1962), 313-314.
"The rules for noise were simple: when I raise my hand, I told them, you make all the noise you can while sitting at your desk, using your mouth, hands, and feet. The kid's eyes would grow wide -- and the teacher's as well -- so I'd add, the important thing is that when I lower my hand, you have to stop."
Kathleen was surprised the school principals didn't come, but she said the roar only lasted a few seconds and the principals probably thought they were imagining the whole thing.
"The rules for silence were equally simple. Don't hold your breath and make funny faces. I learned to say, as this is how third graders typically imagine silence. Just breathe normally but quietly: the only hard thing is to sit so still that you make no noise at all. We always had to try this more than once. A pencil would roll down someone's desk, or someone would shift in a seat. But in every case but one, over many years, I found that children were able to become so still that silence became a presence in the classroom."1
If it would only be this easy to recover silence in the midst of the noise in our larger society, how much better life would be.
Today we have Facebook, Twitter, cell phones, and iPhones, all of which serve useful and valuable services, especially in the time of emergency. But do we have to be "connected" with people all the time? Don't we need to develop a "quiet center" apart from our busy, hectic, and noisy world so that we can lessen our stress and get in touch with our inner life?
Mark in his gospel depicts Jesus as a man of action. His whole gospel focuses not on what Jesus said but more on what he did. In the very first chapter Mark describes Jesus healing people who are suffering, casting out demons, replying to impatient disciples, traveling from town to town, and proclaiming the good news in one synagogue after another. Then right smack in the middle of these sentences loaded with action -- our text for today -- we find these quiet words: "In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed" (Mark 1:35).
Not only on this occasion, but throughout Jesus' brief ministry he took time to go apart to a quiet place, especially before important events he sought communion with God. For example, after his baptism, before he began his ministry he went off into the desert for forty days. Jesus took three of his most trusted disciples to a lonely mountaintop where he was transfigured. After the Last Supper Jesus led his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane where he prayed alone in quiet while his disciples slept.
Again and again Jesus went away to some solitary place, far from the activity of people. He kept the channels open so that he could experience God's fellowship, guidance, and power. He did not always feel the need to be doing something. He did not always have to be useful.
In the Taoist tradition there is a story about a carpenter and his apprentice and an old tree. A carpenter and his apprentice one day were walking through the forest and they came upon a tall, huge, gnarled, old, beautiful oak tree. The carpenter asked the apprentice, "Do you know why this tree is so tall, so huge, so gnarled, so old, and so beautiful?" The apprentice responded, "No… why?" The carpenter explained, "because it is useless. If it had been useful, it would have been cut down long ago and made into tables and chairs, but because it is useless it could grow so tall and so beautiful that you can sit in its shade and relax."2
We all need to take some time away from being useful so that we can grow old freely without being preoccupied with doing something. But how do we go about developing a quiet center?
Jesus gives us clues in this brief description of his own quiet center.
First of all, we need to set aside a certain time.
For Jesus, in this instance, it was in the morning. And the early morning hours continue to be a favorite time for his followers to commune with God in prayer as they seek to start the day conscious of God's presence. Other people may find the noon hour a good break in the day's activities for quiet time. Still others prefer the evening after the busy day is over to find quiet time. A lot depends on our temperament, or our work schedule, or our age. There is no one absolute, perfect time. We must all find the time that suits us best.
Arthur Paul Boers, a Mennonite scholar who has found helpful the classical "Morning and Evening Hours of Prayers," writes: These regular prayers keep reminding me that God is present, at work, and reliable. Thus such prayers call me to pay attention and to trust that God is active even when I cannot discern God's activity for a long, long time."3
I have always admired the painting by Millet called "The Angelus." He pictures a peasant couple bowing in prayer. They had just heard the Angelus bells ringing from the church bell tower in the village. They have stopped their work in the field. They pause for a moment of silent prayer to reconnect their lives to God. The strain and bitterness leave their souls and their troubles as well and their work is seen in a new light.
Through the years I have loved the sound of bells. They remind me to cease what I am doing and for a moment center my thoughts. When I hear our church bell ring five minutes before worship it reminds me it is stop time, it is "catch my breath" time; it is time to be grateful to God; it is time to restore the rhythm of life between work and rest.
Then there is the matter of place. Where is the best place for a quiet center? For Jesus it was a "deserted place" apart from the crowds. On occasion that "deserted place" was in a garden, on a mountaintop, or in the desert itself.
What works for me is sitting in my favorite chair early each morning before the day's work begins. This practice enables me to center down and reminds me to be attentive to God. Some days the quiet time consists of fifteen minutes, other times it is longer or shorter. But I know it if I do not spend this time alone. I might add that this is not a time for planning the day's schedule. I have a tendency of doing too much planning and I have to constantly check myself. No, this not a time to plan anything but simply to listen to what God might have to say to me.
What about method in developing our quiet center? Jesus does not say very much about method or methods. We do not know exactly how he prayed and made contact with God. His followers have used a variety of methods in order to keep in contact with God.
There is no one method that is the only method as Teresa A. Blythe suggests from the title of her recent book, 50 Ways to Pray. Blythe says: "Like many Protestant Christians, I grew up thinking there was only one way to pray… It wasn't until I met a spiritual director in the late 1980s that I was invited to pray in new and different ways."4
Some Christians rely heavily on silence. Just being alone with God in the silence without any elaborate form of prayer to follow is enough for many people.
Chaim Potok in his fascinating novel, The Chosen, tells the story of two Jewish boys from totally different backgrounds who come together because of their common love of baseball. The one boy is from the strict Hasidic home of a rabbi where silence, meditation, and prayer are taken for granted. The other boy is from a family of Reform Jews who are liberal, rational, and sophisticated. The Hasidic boy tries to explain what silence means to him: "You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. I can hear it."5
Could we have such an experience? We could experiment a few minutes each day in a solitary place, centering down, and listening to God. If we did that, we might never be the same.
I know it is not easy to do. No sooner do we attempt to be silent then countless distractions appear. When will I have time to prepare the meal? We worry about our next doctor's appointment. We think of all the work that is left unfinished.
In order to counteract these distractions a variety of techniques have been developed. We might pay attention to our breathing. Inhale slowly. Then exhale. Breathe in good thoughts; exhale bad thoughts. Another way to center down is to repeat a word or phrase over and over again as we descend into the silence. For some people any word will do as a mantra, but for Christians a verse of scripture seems more appropriate, for example, "Be still, and know that I am God…" (Psalm 46:10).
Another way of combating distractions while attempting to remain in the silence is to incorporate the distraction into the silence itself, make it a part of your prayer to God.
Another method that may be used in developing a quiet center is to pray for others, to engage in intercessory prayer. Scientists constantly remind us today in our "postmodern" age that the universe is "interconnected." We are surrounded by fields of invisible energy. Likewise, in human relationships no one lives alone, but we are caught up in a spider's web of connections. We can and do influence each other. Although intercessory prayer remains a mystery in just how it works, we know that Jesus set the example in praying for others, and the apostle Paul reminds us that even today the Spirit prays through us "with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26). When we pray for others we are only adding to the cosmic love of God who cares. Healing takes place in intercessory prayer -- it may be physical healing, or emotional healing, or spiritual healing. It is not always physical healing but God's healing presence is exhibited in some way when we pray for others.
In fourteenth-century England it was not uncommon for a small group of women to settle in a room at the base of some church and give themselves to intercessory prayer on behalf of the church and its members. They were called "anchorites." Indeed, they were anchors who held the church together amidst the storms and struggles of their day.
We too need "anchorites" in our own time, men and women, young and old, active and homebound -- who are willing to pray passionately for our own congregation. What higher calling could we have than to be used to channel God's loving power to others?
The methods used in a quiet center are numerous today, but one other one should be mentioned. It goes by an ancient Latin title, Lectio Divina, which plainly means "spiritual reading" or "sacred reading." This approach uses prayer and the Bible, in fact it consists of four main elements: lectio (reading), mediatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation).
We begin with reading. We choose some portion of scripture and begin with a time of silence. We open our hearts to God to see what God has to say to us. God's word is first and then we respond to the word. It is helpful to read the scripture passage aloud. Also, reading is best done if the scripture selection is not too long, just a few verses will do.
Next we engage in meditation. We linger over the text. We might concentrate on only part of the scriptures assigned, possible only a verse, or a phrase, or even a word. We can take as much time as we need. We can be like a cow chewing his cud. All too often we read the scriptures quickly without letting the words sink deeply into our very being. In a word, we ruminate over the text, perhaps repeating it again and again like a mantra.
We then proceed to prayer. We open our hearts to God and articulate our deepest feelings in the light of the word of the scriptures that we are wrestling with in our innermost being. Our prayers interact with God's word. We express how this word that we have been meditating upon connects with our own life in some specific way. If we are having difficulty in expressing ourselves in prayer, we can find no better resource than the book of Psalms to guide us. The Psalms speak to us of every human emotion. The Psalms provide us with the words to respond to God's word, and even more importantly, they confront us with the real world and not a dream world in which we would like to live.
Finally, we come to contemplation. There is much misunderstanding over this word. We may conjure up monks and nuns who live apart from normal everyday living praying all the time. We who have responsibilities of family life and go to the workplace daily do not have this luxury, valuable as the work the monastic orders do provide for us all.
Contemplation as it is usually is understood in Lectio Divina is something far more practical. After we have read, meditated, and prayed, we contemplate all that we have done to the totality of our lives. We do this, however, with a newly gained consciousness of God with us in all that we do. In other words, to contemplate does not mean retreating from the world; on the contrary it means living what we have just read, meditated upon, and prayed. We might add that contemplation is not just for a select few but for everyone seeking to develop a quiet center. One of the best definitions I have heard of contemplation is "Contemplation means living what we read, not wasting any of it or hoarding any of it, but using it up in living."6
I know of one group who calls themselves the C.I.A., "Contemplatives in Action," not a bad name for those people who have captured the essential meaning of contemplation.
Robert Russell, once a professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in his autobiography titled To Catch an Angel, tells of his love of fishing along the St. Lawrence River. He had a cottage on one of the Thousand Islands. The fact that he is blind complicates his fishing. He explains how he does it:
So that I can go out by myself, whenever I please, I have run a wire down to the end of the dock, where I have mounted a large electric bell. Before I go down to the dock, I plug the line into an outlet in the house. A timing device permits the bell to ring once every thirty seconds. If I row too far upwind to be able to hear the bell, I can still fish without anxiety because I can drift downwind and then I am again in touch with my base.
Russell goes on to add:
And a man needs a base to quest from and needs the sense that, however, far he has strayed, return is still possible.… The river lies before me, a constant invitation, a constant challenge, and my bell is the thread of sound along which I return. To a quiet base.7
We all are in a way like that blind man on the river. God has called us on a journey, out on the river, to go with the flow, but not to forget our quiet base and to return to it often to reset our bearings before continuing again.
The way to silence our noisy hearts in the hectic environment in which we live today is developing a quiet center. Amen.
__________
1. Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: River-head Book, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998), 16-17.
2. Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1974), 22-23.
3. Arthur Paul Boers, The Rhythm of God's Grace (Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2003), xix.
4. Teresa A. Blythe, 50 Ways to Pray: Practices from Many Traditions and Times (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006), 11.
5. Chaim Potok, The Chosen (New York: Fawcett Crest, published by Ballatine Books, 1967), 249.
6. Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 113.
7. Robert Russell, To Catch an Angel (New York: The Vanguard Press, Inc., 1962), 313-314.
