Silence: God’s first language

How many times have you been in a situation in which someone looks at you and says “Would you open us with a prayer?” Or there is the common phrase “Let us pray,” and we all bow our heads and wait for a moment until someone begins to speak words to God. Usually the words are about things that we would like God to do: heal a family member, find us a job, make it rain, or keep it from raining on our picnic.

Most of us have been taught, either by the example of our parents and preachers or taught in Sunday School, that prayer is conversation with God, as if God who is all knowing doesn’t know what we need or want. We were always taught He likes to hear it from us, especially when we are saying we are sorry for something we have done wrong.

Don’t get me wrong: I think that prayer is very important and that we ought to enter into conversation with God as often as possible. It is a way of staying connected to God and to what God wants us to do and become in this life. There are many different ways of praying and many different forms of prayer. For example, there are prayers of praise and worship, prayers of intercession for others, prayers of contrition, and one of the most important prayers, that of gratitude.

Centering prayer

But there is still another type of ancient prayer with a very long history in the church, called “contemplative prayer” or “centering prayer.” Centering prayer is simply a wordless, trusting and opening of one’s self to the Divine Presence. It is the simplest form of prayer: it doesn’t require that we speak any words, or think any lofty thoughts. We just sit in silence in the presence of the Holy One.

The great mystic Saint John of the Cross said, “Silence is God’s first language.” If we look at the very first book of the Bible we see that out of the silence of all eternity, God begins to speak and what God speaks happens. “Let there be….”

As we grow, our minds grow more complex and more settled and we expend vast amounts of energy thinking, planning, worrying, trying to get ahead and staying afloat. Thus, we lose touch with the natural intimacy with God who dwells deep within us. Silence recedes as the demands of daily life grow. To seek some quiet time we might go for a walk in the woods, come sit in the chapel, or go away on a retreat. All of that is good, but it doesn’t stop the inner noise.

Muchness, manyness, noise, crowds and hurry

The Quaker spiritual writer, Richard Foster, said thirty years ago that the principal tools of the devil are muchness, manyness, noise, crowds and hurry. If he said that decades ago, imagine how bad things must have become in recent years with technological advances. The spiritual practice or spiritual discipline of centering prayer is very simply a method of reconnecting us with our natural aptitude for the inner life of intimacy with the God who dwells deep within us all.

Three levels of awareness

Imagine three concentric circles going from largest to smallest within. The largest circle is called ordinary awareness and it is where we spend 95% of our time. Ordinary awareness involves thinking, planning, etc. The next, smaller circle is referred to as spiritual awareness, an interior compass that draws us deeper in our awareness of the awe of the holy. It might be a sunset, or a beautiful mountain, the birth of our child, or the feeling of nearness to God in celebrating communion. The innermost circle is what we call divine awareness, the awareness that God dwells within us, and it is the direction our hearts must travel for intimacy with the Holy One.

Ordinary awareness is always functioning, so if you wish to go to the next level you must pull the plug on the self-reflection activity of the mind. That is exactly what contemplative prayer does for us. The whole spiritual practice rests on the wager that we can break the tyranny of ordinary awareness: we can go beyond our thoughts and our feelings and we can simply just rest in the presence of God.

The charter scripture of this spiritual practice is Ephesians 3:16-19: May he grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

How to begin centering prayer

Centering or contemplative prayer is very simple. Everything begins with your intention: to be totally open to God. You simply sit in silence, allow your heart to be open to the invisible yet always present Holy One. Thoughts may come, just let them go - don’t spend time with them and then after your allotted time, get up and go on with your life. In the silent depths of your time with God, God works on us! It is what St. Paul says is “your life hidden with Christ in God.”

Ever so slowly during our time of centering prayer, God works on us and transformation begins to take place. Some of our old self, old behaviors, and old attitudes begin to fall away. Then one day we find ourselves just a bit more patient, loving, gentle, forgiving, etc. We are becoming more and more the person God created us to be and we are joining with God in bringing the reign of God ever more present upon the earth. It is from this place of intimate union with God that we can indeed make the claim that we are beloved sons and daughters of our loving God.