If we are to truly know ourselves, to accept ourselves,
without fear of the darkness, and the turmoil within us,
we need to cultivate the gift of silence.
~ Kenneth Leech
Another image for silence is the milieu where we experiment with truth, to borrow the title from Mohandas Gandhi’s autobiography My Experiment with Truth. Experiment not as some impersonal analytical study and truth not as that which can be empirically verified. An experiment with truth as the intentional and prayerful work of discovering the earthy yet constantly unfolding eternal meaning of our lives, of who we were created by God to be and who we are in the process of becoming, both in the immediate circumstances of our brief histories and in our intricate and sacred connectedness to the elegant workings of the universe and the unfolding mystery of life. Silence, as the Anglican theologian-priest Kenneth Leech submits, is necessary for self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, the argument and tradition goes, is the long hallway to spiritual maturity and knowledge of God (or it might be better to say to knowing oneself as known and loved by God).
In these times when fundamentalism (whether psychological, political, or theological) is the weaponry and armor of choice for many people, I appreciate Gandhi’s idea that truth is something we try out, undergo, discover in the ongoing act of living rather than a prepackaged, hermetically sealed name brand item that only comes in one size with instructions on the back and found thank you very much on the second shelf in aisle 8. Rooted in fear, fueled by projection onto others, and often giving rise to intolerance and violence, fundamentalism (which is a way of constructing reality) suggests among other things a “laziness of soul.”
My thirty-some years of experience as a pastoral minister, teacher, and spiritual guide reveal to me that many adults have reneged on their responsibility and privilege to cultivate an adult spirituality, to become soulful. In fairness, many, if not most, were never invited, given permission, taught, encouraged, or trusted to do so. Consequently, the streets are crowded with spiritual toddlers, children, and adolescents walking around in adult bodies. I say this sadly not condescendingly. Often, this has been perpetuated by the institutional and/or local church, synagogue, or mosque that has largely failed to support and encourage persons to take responsibility for co-creating with God their own unique identity and destiny.
Instead, the blatant or hidden message is often that one size fits all or in traditions that profess “unity with diversity” this practical wisdom is frequently reduced to a slogan, a nice concept but in name only. It is reasonable to expect that an adult person of faith can be a Catholic or Episcopalian or Presbyterian or evangelical Christian or Moslem or Jew or Buddhist and still be able to live into the uniquely singular truth of his or her own life. To be a vital member of a faith community need not and should not presume being a clone. Unity, contrary to the belief of card-carrying or closeted fundamentalists, is not the same as uniformity, nor does it require it. As you have heard me say before, we don’t need another St. Francis of Assisi, not even one more, or another Dorothy Day or Martin Luther King, Jr. What we need is a Saint _____________ (and here you fill in the blank with the name on your baptismal certificate, credit card, driver’s license, or mug shot). Thomas Merton says it this way: “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”
This conscious process of discovery is what Gandhi means by experimenting with truth. Because this truth is not primarily intellectual in nature, we can’t get it from a sermon or in a book or by mail order. We can’t learn it at a weekend workshop or from an online webinar. Nor is it enough simply to be told who we are: image of God, precious treasure, daughter of delight, beloved son. After all, we are not talking about the truth of 2+2 =4. We are not even talking about just the truth of our being (as if that isn’t enigmatic enough). Rather, we are talking about “the mystery and manners” of living into the truth of our being, living into our sacred image, and living into our soul’s deepest summons, yearning, and fulfillment and then living out toward others. It’s a truth under construction, a truth being born anew each day. This is one of the responsibilities of any authentic religious tradition or spiritual path: to offer not only “an all-embracing significant [life] form,” but also to encourage, support, and send forth individual persons to translate this truth or form into a unique response to the specific circumstances, needs, and dilemmas of their lives and times.
Speaking as a Catholic Christian, for example, my responsibility and privilege is not merely to “follow” Jesus, as if “imitating Christ” were nothing more than wooden mimicry, but rather to learn and to live Jesus, to apprentice to Jesus and then to transpose Jesus into this time and this place through the particularity of my life with all my abilities and liabilities, gifts and shortcomings, talents and imperfections, life challenges and life opportunities, failures and faith.
When a religious tradition becomes so narrow, insecure, defensive, or dogmatic as to be frightened by ambiguity, contradiction, paradox, the unknown, or the messiness of life and intimidated by the idea of experimenting with truth, it has no doubt moved away from the transformational power of its originating root experience, the spirit and vision of its originating personality, and grossly misunderstood what is meant by experimenting with truth. Unlike some teenagers who dangerously experiment with the choking game or vodka eyeballing or car surfing, experimenting with the truth of one’s being is the mature and responsible thing to do. Not to do so is what is dangerous. As Rabbi Heschel and other spiritual exigetes of the human soul know, living into the truth of our unique personhood is a continuing experiment because whereas human being is a given becoming human is up for grabs. For the newborn delivered and placed on his or her mother’s breast, human being is a reality, a done deal. But becoming human is a summons, responsibility, life-long task, privilege, and destiny.
Reflecting on Gandhi’s experiment, the poet, priest, and activist Daniel Berrigan claimed that although the search for the truth of one’s life is not an exact science it is as deliberate and demanding as any scientific experiment. He emphasizes that it
requires that the soul of the seeker be an analogous laboratory – freedom, rigor, purity of soul, readiness for suffering, respect for others. These seekers prepare their lives as they prepare a specimen, a complex of equipment, an organism of tissues.
He continues, explaining that the re-searchers of their own being
are as rigorous in undergoing, in evaluating, in welcoming the new and unexpected. They are, in sum, imaginative. They realize that the original hypothesis, i.e., “human beings are creatures capable of truth,” remains a pious sentiment to be mouthed by the worst charlatans, killers, manipulators of power – until it is embodied in a personal and social style.
Silence is one indispensable dimension in the laboratory of the soul where all significant discoveries about human becoming are tested and realized and where we learn to embody rather than merely mouth full human aliveness.
Though bathed in grace, awakening to the truth of ourselves and then finding the imagination and courage to live what we have discovered is an arduous, life-long task. The experiment is not only work, which signals that it requires great effort, but specifically is our work, which signals that it is our vocation since what is in question is the truth of our lives, and what is at stake is our desire and commitment to live truthfully (not perfectly), to give form in a tangible and personal way to those truths from the all-embracing significant form that we discover in the sorrowful and joyful mysteries of our actual life. Poet William Stafford writes:
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life.
How tragic it would be to get to the end of our lives and to discover that what we gave ourselves to, what we “did,” were in the end divorced from the deepest yearnings and purposes of our unheard souls. How sad to be a human being but never to have moved closer to becoming human.
We misunderstand the meaning of our life if we sidestep the reality and meaning of our vocation or if we think vocation is only a question for young adults planning careers and dreaming dreams or discerning priesthood or becoming a nun. To be awake, to be a grateful and responsible adult, to be a man or woman of mature faith, means to rise each day knowing that I am called, that something will be asked of me that transcends my private plans and selfish agendas.
Spiritual formation that is in service to ongoing transformation requires a laboratory of silence that we can return to again and again to listen loudly to the summons of our soul and the evolving truth of our lives. This re-search, this experiment concerns itself with the questions: what does God or the universe or Mystery or Spirit want to bring to life today through me? It might be something “as small as a world and as large as alone.” It doesn’t need to be big, just true.
REFLECTION:
This week ask yourself: To what truth is my life in service? What truth do I serve?