First, I have a confession to make. I enjoyed my break from Facebook more than I had anticipated. In fact, I thought about disconnecting my Facebook account and ignoring my blog for the rest of my life.
The pathbreaker Marshall McLuhan said that we should analyze our relationship with technology. He talked about how it “amputates” a part of us, even as it extends our “selves.” I think fasts from Facebook and from technology are, at least for me, necessary regularly; otherwise, I get too caught up in thinking that I am Facebook. I get too caught up in thinking that my words are who I am, and I forget the Silence that is God’s first language, as John of the Cross famously said.
I have had much time with Silence over the Lenten season. I need much more. And I will keep rearranging my life to get it now. I had forgotten how much I crave time with Silence. Silence is more than golden. This Silence is loving, listening, healing, and ultimate acceptance. This Silence is even playful. It opens up new vulnerabilities in us. It makes me willing to be uncertain. It takes my tightly clinched fists and massages them open.
What is it I hold on to so unflinchingly? My need to be right, my need to self-justify, my need to get things done, my need to do well, my need to be good and to do good, my need to be liked, my need to look good, my need to please others.
I have to in some mature way die to all of these “needs.” Some of my dear friends posted this devotional from Following Christ on their web pages recently, and their highlighting it for themselves highlighted it for me, too:
We must learn from the disciples’ doubt. What we perceive as death is often the stillness before the eruption of new life. We must realize that waiting on God is always fruitful. It teaches us not to be fearful. Christ’s bitter experience in the tomb thaws our hearts and gives us the courage to love. (From page 164 of Following Christ)
My wise thirty-plus-year friend, Beth Moore Ragusin, says that we must ask Christ to free us from our “Chicken Little Syndrome.” I guess that is CLS. It would be transformative for me, the fearful disciple, to go from suffering from CLS, meaning “Chicken Little Syndrome,” to CLS, meaning “Christ-Loving Sinner.”
You might say, “But you do love Christ, Carmen.” But if there is anywhere in my heart where I hold on to my esteem of my self over loving and forgiving others and helping those in need, my love for Christ is so weak. All of the wise ancient writers I study mention that perfect humility is a self-forgetting kind of love. I crave that above all. I have for a long time now.
I think that the craving comes long before the experience. I am a slow learner. I always must envision or desire what I need long before I even start on the path towards it. But Christ is patient with me. By “patient,” I intend the etymology of the word to dominate: “long-suffering.” To be “patient” with someone, we literally “suffer” with them.
To be a patient means to realize that you are “suffering.” Jesus is always saying that only the sick need a doctor. Only those who are ill need healing. Only those who are afflicted need help.
We must be patient with each other, the way Christ is patient with us. We must be patient with each other because each of us is Christ’s patient. Each of us is suffering in some way from the human condition. Each of us is trapped by sin.
When I get really quiet before the Lord, when I listen to my heart, when I go past the surface worry, past the to-do lists, past the ego concerns, past the deeper worry, past the process of forgiveness, past the healing balm of Christ’s reassurances to me as a sinner, there remains in the hidden spaces of my own darkness my hearing the hardness of my heart.
These places of calcification undermine love and paralyze my arms every time I refuse to embrace them in the Silence, before Christ. Life is so short. During Lent, my prayer became, “Father, teach me gentleness. Teach me love. Help me let go of everything hard in me.”
The late fourth-, early fifth-century Desert Father John Cassian gives me hope. His words, like his sandals, have genuine grit in them:
Every day, grab the gospel plow, which is the constant reflection on our Lord’s Cross. Don’t let go. Use this divine tool to break up, turn over, and soften the ground of your heart. It is the only way we can rid ourselves of the deadly beasts lurking in our hearts’ most hidden lairs.
May the Lord bless you and me as we walk side-by-side, risking all to become as brave as that lowly Carpenter in loving.
Our culture doesn’t value silence. Maybe that is why Americans stand out as so loud when they are in other countries. I’ll have to think about it a bit more. But even if silence isn’t valued by the culture, it can and should be valued by us as individuals. Don’t rush to fill the silence. . . with something less valuable.
My husband and I just read “New Life” and we were so blessed. Someday, I do hope to hold in my hands a book of Carmen’s Chatter, to read over and over.
Thank you for saying so succinctly what I have been wrestling with. I have been fearful of that time of silence because it has always meant more stripping away, more dying, less me, or the me I think I am and had projected myself to be.