The Discipline of Silence and Solitude
By Winston Pinzon

We are community-dwellers. By nature we human beings thrive in the company of other people. Whether we like it or not we are surrounded by either our friends, or family members, or neighbors, or even by strangers. There is not a day in a week without someone beside us. We cannot escape the presence of another person near us. Some are naturally more drawn to people others less. But it is not only people which gives meaning to our existence. We also want to express ourselves by speaking, singing, and doing things. We want to hear other people. We want them to speak, to sing, to do things. Being in relationship and in company with others, and being able to open our lips to express ourselves and being able to hear others, are contexts for our spirituality. These are the contexts in which we hear and see Jesus. However, Christian spirituality does not only happen and develop among people who love to be in a community. The need to be in company with others and the need to be constantly speaking and doing something, should be harmonized with solitude and silence. Busyness and noise should be tempered with pauses and quietness. Christian spirituality is about balance. It is avoiding both extremes. Of hustle and bustle we have plenty, but of solitude and silence much is left to be desired. It therefore behooves us to consider once more the discipline of solitude and silence.   

To be in solitude is to be alone, but it is being alone with God. To be in solitude is to intentionally move from the presence of another person, or from the crowd in order to be alone with Jesus. The crowd is a potential source of manifold and confusing voices. The instinct of the crowd is the instinct of mob rule.  The crowd is unmerciful and unkind to the one who wants to be alone. Crowd takes so much of the energy of the missionary. To be in solitude means going away to some place, perhaps into your room, or your backyard, and then to a retreat place away from home, away from the centers and highways of blare and clatter. This means going away from busy schedules to seek tranquility in the presence of God. No companion, no visitor, no cell phone, no tv, no ipod, no movies, no malls, no computers. Nothing with which to busy yourself.  To be in solitude is to be solo, to be by yourself, to seek God. Solitude and silence come together. Solitude without silence is unimaginable. It is like a dance. Each one complements the other. Either of the two cannot endure without the other.

To be in silence is to be quiet. Initially, this means, literally, not talking.  Interestingly, the first language of God is silence. Before he ever spoke the “Let there be…” in Genesis, there was only silence. God is at home with silence. Human beings too need this ingredient in their lives if they want to fulfill their humanity. To be in silence is to rest—to rest in the Lord. To rest in his grace and love. No reading of your favorite books, no singing, no calling of someone, no conversation with another person, no hearing of any music, no texting. To be in silence is to literally wait for God.

In solitude and silence we become aware of God. In solitude and silence we learn to stop grumbling and demanding, and allow God to be God instead.  In this setting we learn to recover the picture of God’s heart for us.

The Holy Spirit and our spirit begin to connect. As Henry Nouwen said, we begin to become aware that we have a soul—that spiritual, immortal part of us that can only feel fully at home with God and not with anyone or anything else. This is where we begin to recover our vocation. Solitude and silence are gifts from God.
We need a regular time, a rhythm, to put ourselves in solitude and silence. We’ve got to find time and place to stop from all our activities in order to rest, to listen, to be alone, to contemplate and meditate on the Word of God. Somebody said, “Stop the world, I want to get off.”   Try sitting in one place, without doing anything, not speaking a word and be silent. Do this for half an hour to one hour. If you can’t stand it you will realize how noisy your heart and mind are. When we are finally rested our spirit or soul will have the opportunity to show us what’s going on inside us.

Silence makes many people uncomfortable. Some time ago MMP had a spiritual retreat for young people. It was held on a mountain, away from the city. During this time one young man was overheard saying, “The silence here is deafening. Do you have a radio?” Some people cannot stand silence. Why is this so? Perhaps the silence reveals the pain in the heart that was always meant to be hidden. That is why they want to do something else. They want to occupy their lives with anything but silence.
Silence gives us proper perspectives. We will have a hard time sorting out our confusion, our troubles, our problems when we are busy bodies and noisy. When we are noisy inside us we will have a hard time hearing the voice of God. The coming of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives starts with silence. It is common to hear evangelical teachers teaching us to invade heaven with our loud petitions and only a few who teach us to learn to cultivate inner silence first.

We have a story in the Old Testament about Elijah. After a victorious prophetic campaign against Jezebel, he got scared and he hid in Mt. Horeb. To make the story short God spoke to him.  The Lord said to Elijah, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave (I Kings 19:11-13). The voice of God can be heard not in the cacophony or noise of our lives but in the silence of our inner lives as we wait and walk with him.  

To some people one hour in silence is a luxury. In my experience the bigger the sacrifice for silence the larger the compensation. God sees the intention of our hearts and He rewards us with his presence accordingly. IF we are willing to offer some time to God, He is more than willing to meet us. My temptation always is to be preoccupied with urgent things. Busyness is the enemy of silence, of contemplation and meditation.  Jesus spent a lot of time in silent prayer. Those who work or deal or minister with people, especially among the poor, will not survive long without incorporating in their daily schedule a time for solitude, silence and contemplation.