Sunday Morning Meds--Silence

The Missouri River

“. . .search your hearts and be silent.”

Psalm 4

Flannery O’Connor, I remember reading, one of the finest and most well-known writers of the 20th century was almost totally inconspicuous in her classes at Iowa Writers Workshop. I believe it. Every year I taught, I had a few silent types that knocked my socks off when they handed in an essay. Teachers love talkers, but classrooms that sound morgue-ish doesn’t necessarily mean that the minds that inhabit it are laid out cold.

Generalizations are always hazardous, but, historically at least, the annals of the American West are rife with stories about white folks—immigrant farmers, cavalry lieutenants, even French trappers—who grew awfully uncomfortable with the silence Native folks felt imperative before a discussion. Then again, the history of the West wouldn’t be as jaded if white folks had kept their mouths shut a whole lot smore than they did.

Given our politically-charged media culture’s incessant yapping, it’s probably understandable why some people would opt out and seek the enforced silence of the monastery. Just this week, a good friend told me he’s been spending time with the Benedictines at a monastery not all that far from here. Thomas Merton and Henry Nouwen have wide and devoted readership; it’s difficult to know whether, a couple decades ago, Kathleen Norris’s Cloister Walk begat a phenomenon or merely rode the wave. To many—and to me—silence often looks good, probably because it’s hard to come by.

I stopped at Mulberry Point all by lonesome on Thursday because I knew that the overview of the Missouri River right there on the Nebraska side of the river simply takes your breath away—and the words that come along. Sometimes quiet speaks.

I’ve become familiar with old folks’ homes. My mother was in one for a long time; we visit my wife’s father every Sunday afternoon. Silence often pervades those places, no matter how cheerfully they’re decorated. I suppose the silence in those homes doesn’t make life there any more moral or high-toned.

But here in Psalm 4, it’s a command. In this 12-step therapy regimen David is creating in this psalm, he raises a finger and says, simply, just be quiet.

He means me. Be still, he says. And here I am on this Sunday morning, going on and on.

Be still, David says. Just, be still.

Lord, help me.