“Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: “Go, tell Hezekiah:
Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David:
I have heard your prayer and seen your tears.
I will heal you: in three days you shall go up to the LORD’s temple;
I will add fifteen years to your life.
I will rescue you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria;
I will be a shield to this city.” – Isaiah 38.4-5Silence becomes a temple for the offering of tears, and in that silence an atmosphere of healing emerges where in the words of Thomas Keating, anything is possible. And not only healing, also an adding of life – perhaps in quantity but certainly in quality.
And not only that, as individuals dwell in the shelter of silence receiving the divine therapy and the increased quality of interior freedom from the unconscious wounds of a lifetime, it has an impact on others – indeed, in the words of Isaiah, our consent to God’s love and presence in the silence becomes something of a shield against the ordinary thoughts and afflictions of being human amidst other humans, and a shield of grace neutralizing the afflictions of our interior thoughts. This is a rescue we all need – from our own interior negative thoughts and emotions, and from the unconscious, fear based behavior of others.
Similarly, Jesus promised: abide in me and you will experience abundant life and fullness of joy.
In these troubled days this is extraordinarily good advice. I myself find it very hard, nearly impossible, to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the pain of the world – and by the tendency of politics and the media, who have the power to do something concrete to heal the divisions that underlie that pain, only to inflame them.
As Lon Burnham, a Quaker in the Texas House of Representatives, said recently on QuakerSpeak,
A lot of times people think that they can make peace by doing war, and that’s just so ludicrous on the face of it. I mean, it’s almost a scientific fact of physics that if you do violence, you create more violence. The only way to avoid violence is to create peace and to create justice.
It is impossible, it seems to me, to create peace if one’s heart is not at peace with God; and impossible effectively to work for justice if one is wracked by anger and despair.
The alternative is not a selfish self-protectiveness, nor immersing oneself in the material goods of the world, but silence: a “temple for the offering of tears”. Opening oneself completely to the pain and horror of a broken world in the silence may seem like crucifixion – not for nothing was retreating to a life of prayer in the desert in the early Christian centuries known as “white martyrdom” – but it is the path to healing and new life. As Isaac Penington wrote,
Give over thine own willing, give over thy own running, give over thine own desiring to know or be anything and sink down to the seed which God sows in the heart, and let that grow in thee and be in thee and breathe in thee and act in thee; and thou shalt find by sweet experience that the Lord knows that and loves and owns that, and will lead it to the inheritance of Life, which is its portion.
Who knows where the silence leads for each of us? “More things,” in the words of Alfred Tennyson, “are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of…”
Silent Assemblies 
Thank you so much for this Mike. Sometimes I forget to what extent we are called to surrender to Silence and what that feels like.