“Silence spoken here.” I first read this phrase in reference to the Abbey of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Kentucky. Silence has been spoken there for more than 175 years. It has been spoken in the Christian tradition for millennia more.
This silence is said to aid us in listening for God’s guidance, to give space for the Holy Spirit to speak. Christians seek silence because Jesus sought silence in the wilderness after his baptism and at other intervals during his ministry. Silence cultivates the inner spaciousness needed to approach our siblings in Christ, and all people, with expansive grace and generous patience. As science now confirms, silence and deep breath can calm the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn instincts of our central nervous systems.
For ages, monasteries have cultivated silence and modeled it for others. Their inhabitants have provided hospitable space for pilgrims to come sit and pray with them in silence. Christian teachers have handed down these traditions. Parker Palmer has called others to the habits of silence embraced in the Quaker tradition. He describes patterns of communal conversation, discernment, and accountability in which we “treat silence as a member of the group,” to quote from his touchstones for establishing what he calls Circles of Trust.
