Originally published in the Herald-Zeitung’s Opinion page, May 3, 2024.
I remember attending catholic elementary and high school many decades ago. I performed well in all my classes but one: when our teachers asked us to be silent. My classmates and I struggled with this discipline, this attitude, of being still and silent for part of the class day. I failed miserably.
Today it is often difficult to find places of refuge, pockets of silence; as a nation of extraverts, we seem to demand noise, music, activity, play, and keeping busy inside a noisy bubble. Silence seems to frighten many people. It appears to be so unproductive, and producing is one of the hallmarks of a consumer culture.
Some schools are introducing basic meditation practices that encourage and cultivate silence as a behavior that can calm, order, and organize one’s thoughts, aspirations, anxieties and general well-being. It tends to the soul life of the student, not just to their minds and bodies.
Thomas Moore, a fine writer and author of one of the best-selling books in decades, Care of the Soul, has gathered his thoughts and practices in a recent book with an enticing title: The Eloquence of Silence: Surprising Wisdom in Tales of Emptiness. The word emptiness may put off many would-be readers of his reflections. But his history reveals how deeply he descended into silence.
From the ages of 13 to 26 Thomas lived in a monastery where the religious life emphasized obedience to a routine with a minimum of clutter and of desires to purchase and possess. A pleasurable life, he learned, was not a possession-filled life; in fact, the latter may cancel out the former. His life of openness gave space for the soul’s needs.
In silence there is time to reconsider, to ponder what and who one is, where one is headed and the purpose for one’s life. In silence one may grasp the important difference between what one wants and what one needs. This kind of discernment can grow out of emptiness, which is not a vacuum but an attitude of contentment, not grasping, not clinging, not wanting but being.
We all know the capitalist adage: time is money. But what if we placed that conventional wisdom next to “time is meaning.” The second truth encourages open spaces, gaps, cracks in the solid block of each day for slowing down.
I also liked the short entertaining chapters. Each begins with a quote from a wisdom text, a poem, a play, a film, a fairy tale that sets the table for that chapter’s meditation. Each ends with a blank page, an empty space, where the reader might jot down how the chapter impacted some insight from their own life. We are given some emptiness to complete the text through the filters of our own experiences.
Eloquence is also playful: a few chapter titles include “The Empty Pot,” “The Empty Plate,” “The Wine Ran Out,” “Sacred Ignorance.” They bespeak a sense of humor driving Thomas’ reflections that encourage a quiet presence to the ordinary motions of one’s day and night.
When we hear, for example, that someone is “full of himself,” we know that emptiness is not a major goal. The observation is not a compliment. Too much self, not enough trust and willingness to accept what is.
Thomas likes the image of a life structure with many doors and windows that let the air of life in. He encourages us not to stuff all the openings in our daily life, which leaves no room for surprise, for the unexpected, even for wonder to enter.
Quiet, he believes, is a form of emptiness, which is so important for any of us who wish to “reflect and remember.” Open the windows, prop life’s doors, and breathe easily. Abundance will appear everywhere.