Spiritual Listening and the Power of Silence
In his introduction to Robert Cardinal Sarah’s book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, Nicholas Diat tells the story of a friendship between Robert Cardinal Sarah and Brother Vincent, a monk at the Lagrasse Abbey in Southern France. Though in the prime of life, Brother Vincent was languishing in the final days of a painful battle with multiple sclerosis. Yet, Diat remarks, Brother Vincent “was already living in the Great Silence of heaven.” This silence wasn’t merely because the sclerosis prevented Brother Vincent from talking, but because his life was characterized by a type of spiritual strength born in the profound silence of contemplation.
When back in Rome, Cardinal Sarah would sometimes phone Brother Vincent, even though the latter couldn’t talk. Sometimes Cardinal Sarah would speak gentle words of comfort into the phone, but often he would simply listen to the brother’s labored breathing, being together in their silent bond.
In the book that was inspired by Brother Vincent, Cardinal Sarah remarks that “in order to listen, it is necessary to keep quiet.” He continues:
I do not mean merely a sort of constraint to be physically silent and not to interrupt what someone else is saying, but rather an interior silence, in other words, a silence that not only is directed toward receiving the other person’s words but also reflects a heart overflowing with a humble love, capable of full attention, friendly welcome and voluntary self-denial, and strong with the awareness of our poverty.
I think the Cardinal is onto something important in linking silence with listening. Listening forms a key part of human flourishing, yet today we face numerous pressures that militate against active listening. Because so much of modern life takes place against a backdrop of noise and haste, our capacity to listen—especially to slow down and listen to the silences—can atrophy.
Rembert Herbert, author of Entrances: Gregorian Chant in Daily Life, believes that chant—and in particular, the periodic pauses in Gregorian plainchant—may hold a solution to our malaise:
Listening is key for both practical and spiritual reasons. The chant is designed to discipline our inner attention, and our first access to that attention is the ear. St. Bernard says that we “merit the beatific vision by our constancy in listening. … The hearing, if it be loving, alert, and faithful, will restore the [inner] sight.” But if we are attentive as we try to listen, we find our minds filled with competing thoughts. We observe that we are actively listening only a portion of the time. St. John Climacus tells us exactly what to do: “Fight always with your thoughts and call them back when they wander away. … Do not lose heart when your thoughts are stolen away. Just remain calm, and constantly call your mind back.”
It will take time for singers to realize that St. John’s words—“fight always…constantly call your mind back”—are urging a level of inner activity which is foreign to almost all of us. But at least, as singers, we are familiar with the idea that good musicians listen to each other. What we must add now is the novel idea that, more important even than listening to each other, is listening to the silence between the phrases of the psalms.”
Later in the book Herbert draws on St. Bernard to suggest that “faithful listening leads naturally to strengthened inner vision—not mystical experience, but a state of gentle awareness of one’s inner condition. Listening to silence, he suggests, helps us better listen to ourselves.
But why would we want to listen to ourselves, and how does this relate to listening to others? And how can going slow, and becoming comfortable with silence, help in our spiritual listening? These are some questions we will explore in this article. Let’s begin with the importance of listening to ourselves.
Listening to Yourself
One of the reasons we often find it hard to listen to our inner condition is that we haven’t slowed down long enough to attend to our outer (bodily) condition. In a previous article, I talked about listening to our breath and heart rate. But that’s only the beginning. Our bodies are always sending us messages, but sometimes we’re going too fast to stop and listen. Some basic messages from our bodies include things like:
“I’m hungry”
“I’m excited”
“I’m tired”
“I’m stressed”
“I’m relaxed”
Listening to these bodily messages enables us to make responsible decisions. If we are not listening to such messages, then it’s easy merely to react to the effects of being hungry, tired, hurt, stressed, etc. However, by listening to our bodies, we can recognize when a certain thought is creating stress and might need to be reframed, or that a conversation is causing a headache and might need to be postponed, or that we are having the physiological symptoms of anxiety and might need to pause to pray. Indeed, as carnate creatures, we experience all emotion bodily; consequently, learning to listen to our physical selves is an important way to manage our emotional lives.
Everyone experiences emotions, just as everyone experiences physical symptoms like hunger, cold, and tiredness, but not everyone pays attention to what they’re feeling. When our attention is scattered by the latest mental, emotional, or digital stimuli, we find it difficult to accurately perceive what is happening in our emotional life. Healthy individuals pay attention to what they’re feeling, not to wallow in their own subjective interiority, but to better manage their emotions through productive self-talk and responsible action. As I explain in my earlier book, Gratitude in Life’s Trenches:
By getting in touch with our emotions, we can begin increasing the distance between stimulus and response and thus cooperate with divine grace in the purification of the soul. Moreover, by cultivating a present-moment awareness of our feelings, we can begin noticing the heart’s micromotions without being drawn into their narratives. … With present-moment awareness of the body, we can begin listening to the messages it is trying to send us, including messages about subtle changes in mood. By being mindful of the needs, reactions, and sensations of the body, we can increase the distance between stimulus and response and make wise choices as a result.
Learning to listen to ourselves—our inner, outer, and spiritual condition—also enables us to manage our thought-life. Because our thoughts are the breeding ground for emotions, close observation of our thinking enables us better to manage our feelings. For example, we can ask:
What mental scripts have I been replaying through my mind about myself or others?
Does my present unhappiness stem from comparing myself to others?
Am I feeling stressed because I’ve stopped trusting God and started relying on myself instead?
Am I annoyed by someone because I’m being judgmental?
Does my anxiety stem from pride and a need for others to think of me in a certain way?
This type of emotional and cognitive self-monitoring begins by slowing down and learning to listen to ourselves. But listening to ourselves is only the beginning; eventually, it’s important to move onto the more important task of listening to others.
Listening to Each Other
In Luke 10, we read Christ’s famous parable of the Good Samaritan. In this story, a man is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho but is waylaid by thieves. The thieves steal his belongings, beat him up, and leave him on the roadside half dead. Pretty soon, a Pharisee passes on the same road yet doesn’t even lift a hand to help the wounded man. A little later, another religious person passes by and again ignores the injured man. Finally, a Samaritan—a person considered unclean by the religious establishment—passes along the road. Seeing the injured man, the Samaritan stops and helps. Listening to the stranger’s needs, he spares no expense to provide medical treatment, accommodation, and care. His attention is loving, alert, and faithful.
In its original context, this parable is about God’s covenant people being defined, not by pedigree and mere outward religiosity, but by works of charity and mercy—ultimately, faith in Christ, and everything that entails. But like so many of Christ’s parables, this story has provided fertile ground for rich application in a variety of different contexts. Some of the most fascinating reflections on the Good Samaritan parable concern the importance of being able to pause.
Consider, for example: Why did the religious leaders fail to stop and help? Maybe they looked down on the injured man. Or perhaps they were filled with such a sense of their own self-importance that they thought it was beneath their dignity to attend to the vulnerable man. Or maybe they were just in a hurry. These factors are not mutually exclusive: When we have a sense of our own self-importance, the result is that we speed from one thing to the next, perhaps imagining that God’s care of the world depends on our frantic activity. In the process, we actually miss the most important task God has for us, which is to stop and listen to the person he has put in our path.
When we have a sense of our own self-importance, the result is that we speed from one thing to the next, perhaps imagining that God’s care of the world depends on our frantic activity. In the process, we actually miss the most important task God has for us, which is to stop and listen to the person he has put in our path.
Fifty-two years ago, John Darley and Daniel Batson conducted a still-famous experiment based on the Good Samaritan story. Students at Princeton Theological Seminary were told to prepare a short speech. Half the students were asked to discourse on job opportunities; the other half were asked to preach a sermon on the Parable of the Good Samaritan. One by one, each student was instructed to walk across campus to deliver their speech. Without the participants knowing it, the experimenters had divided them into three groups. If an individual was in the first group, he was told he would arrive on time to deliver his talk (“It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over”). Individuals in the second group were told they would arrive if they left immediately. But if someone was in the third group, a research assistant primed the person to feel rushed by saying, “Oh, you’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago. We’d better get moving.”
Unbeknownst to the students, the experimenters had arranged that, during their walk across campus to deliver the speech, each student would encounter a wounded man lying on the ground. The man was slumped in a doorway with his eyes closed, coughing and moaning, clearly in distress. The researchers wanted to know who would be like the Good Samaritan and stop to help the stranger. Only 40% of the students stopped to help. Significantly, the determining factor in whether they stopped was whether they were rushed. Of those who believed they had plenty of time to make it across campus, 63% stopped. Among the moderately hurried group, 45% of the students stopped. Among those who felt rushed, only 10% stopped.
But being rushed was not the only variable in the research. Prior to the experiment, students had been given a questionnaire about why they had chosen to pursue ministry. Did they see religion as a means for personal and spiritual fulfillment? Were they searching for meaning in life? Did they see the pastorate as a prestigious career? Did they want to enter the ministry as a means for helping people?
At this point, the experiment took an incredibly counter-intuitive turn. When the completed questionnaires were compared to the students’ behavior, it emerged that beliefs about ministry had no impact on whether the student stopped. The students who entered ministry to help people were no more likely to stop than the students who entered it for more professional reasons. Again, the only thing that made a difference was whether the student was in a hurry.
At this point you might be wondering if it made any difference whether the student was walking across campus to preach on the Parable of the Good Samaritan or talk about job opportunities. Amazingly, the answer is no. Sixty-seven percent of students were more likely to help someone in trouble if they weren’t in a hurry, regardless of anything else. In writing up their findings, Darley and Batson noted, “Indeed, on several occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on this way.”
At first, this is disheartening. How could a person who had been thinking about the Parable of the Good Samaritan, who was on his way to give a sermon about the story, not stop to help an injured man lying across his way? Do thoughts and inner beliefs really make such little difference to whether we pause and show love to someone in need?
Don’t be too quick to judge the students. If we’re honest, most of us (myself included) would have to admit that when we’re in a hurry, we are less likely to stop and offer the gift of our attention. But this experiment is also unsettling because it suggests that whatever difference our beliefs and thoughts do make in our behavior, this is minor compared to whether we feel rushed. Commenting on this phenomenon in The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell remarks:
What this study is suggesting, in other words, is that the convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less important, in the end, in guiding your actions than the immediate context of your behavior. The words “Oh, you’re late” had the effect of making someone who was ordinarily compassionate into someone who was indifferent to suffering—of turning someone, in that particular moment, into a different person.
You and I may never find ourselves in the exact situation of the Good Samaritan in having to stop and help a wounded man or woman. Yet all around us are people who are mentally or emotionally wounded who need a listening ear or a helping hand. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give is simply to slow down and listen.
I’m increasingly convinced that in our age of distractions, inattention and scattered focus, the greatest gift we can offer someone is simply to listen. As Simone Weil once observed, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Yet when we’re in a hurry, it’s easy to listen to people with only half our attention. As Elder Thaddeus observed in Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives:
If we listen to our neighbor with only half our attention, of course we will not be able to answer them or comfort them. … We are distracted. They talk, but we do not participate in the conversation; we are immersed in our own thoughts. But if we give them our full attention, then we take up both our own burden and theirs.
How Christ Submitted to the Pause
When we read the Gospels, one of the themes that stands out is that even though Christ maintained a busy schedule of travel, healing, teaching, and prayer, He always took time to be present with the people who came across His path. Often that meant taking a pause.
Consider when Jesus was traveling with a crowd to heal Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:21-43). A woman who had been bleeding 12 years heard about this great healer. She had spent her entire livelihood on various doctors, yet no one had successfully treated her. This was more than merely a medical issue: being ritually unclean, she felt alienated from her community. She even felt unworthy to approach Jesus, let alone touch Him. She thought, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.”
Meanwhile, as Jesus continued travelling to heal Jairus’ daughter, a throng enveloped Him. No doubt the people felt rushed, since Jairus’ daughter was at the point of death. Would Jesus make it to Jairus’ house on time?
When the woman with the flow of blood came and touched Jesus, He felt power go out of Him. Then He paused. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”
His disciples replied, “You see the multitude thronging you, and you say, ‘Who touched me?” But Jesus continued looking to see who had touched him. Meanwhile, the woman knew what had happened, for she felt within herself that she had been healed. In fear and trembling, she came and fell down before Jesus and told everything. Then He said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.”
This is a beautiful story on so many levels, for here we see Jesus embodying the Good Samaritan. Although He had an agenda to fulfil and was quickly hurrying to Jairus’ house, He was able to set that aside—at least temporarily—to pause and be present with this woman.
No doubt Christ’s pause bothered the others. In fact, while Jesus was speaking to the woman, messengers came from Jairus’ home to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” Perhaps the people even blamed the woman for slowing Jesus down. But God is never rushed because He is not bound by time. Instead, Jesus simply continued His journey and, when He reached Jairus’s house, He raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead.
Listening to Silence
When our lives become defined by the kingdom of God, we stop being ruled by the tyranny of time. Consequently, we are able to slow down and attend to whatever God brings into our path. Sometimes this means temporarily setting aside our own agenda. Sometimes this means tuning out all the noise and listening to silence. And above all, it means being able to submit to the pause. Of course, this is easier said than done in a world that has left many of us addicted to noise.
When our lives become defined by the kingdom of God, we stop being ruled by the tyranny of time. Consequently, we are able to slow down and attend to whatever God brings into our path. Sometimes this means…being able to submit to the pause.
In my earlier post, “The Power of the Pause: Gregorian Chant, Leisure, and the Joy of Going Slow,” I shared an anecdote from Dr. Anna Lembke’s book Dopamine Nation that is worth repeating here. Lembke describes the treatments she gives to patients suffering from various addictions. One of the addictions she treats is digital addiction. This reflects a growing awareness among psychiatrists, psychologists, and doctors that habits of information consumption can stimulate the dopamine systems similarly to drugs. For those suffering in the grip of this addiction, stillness can be terrifying. Because it’s hard to just be in the present moment, we end up in addictive behaviors that distract us from the present, from ourselves, and even from God. Dr. Lembke illustrates this with an anecdote from her work with one patient.
My patient Sophie, a Stanford undergraduate from South Korea, came in seeking help for depression and anxiety. Among the many things we talked about, she told me she spends most of her waking hours plugged into some kind of device: Instagramming, YouTubing, listening to podcasts and playlists.
In session with her I suggested she try walking to class without listening to anything and just letting her own thoughts bubble to the surface.
She looked at me both incredulous and afraid.
“Why would I do that?” she asked, openmouthed.
A week later, Sophie returned and reported on the new experience: “It was hard at first. But then I got used to it and even kind of liked it. I started noticing the trees.”
I like this anecdote because it shows how stillness can be healing. Given the factory mindset of contemporary pragmatism, it is easy to feel we’re wasting time whenever we’re not multitasking. Why simply walk to class when you could be walking and consuming information? Why simply drive to work when you could be both driving and listening to the news or an audiobook? Yet sometimes less is more. Sometimes we need to get less done in order to live richer and more meaningful lives. In other words, sometimes we need to be still.
Stillness is a way to be tethered to the present, which is the only place we can truly meet God. Yet being present with God is difficult because God is not “useful”; that is, He defies the results-oriented drift of our utilitarian moment. The devil knows that if he can keep us from being connected to the present moment, then he can keep us from connecting with God.
Dr. Lembke expanded on this thesis in an interview with Dr. Andrew Huberman, host of the Huberman Lab Podcast.
In this interview, Lembke shared that because the modern world offers so many ways of distracting ourselves, when we find ourselves with nothing to do—being, if you will, “bored”—a person can feel like he or she is in freefall. Simply doing nothing can be incredibly frightening for many people.
Dr. Michele DeMarco believes our anxiety about silence relates to uncertainty avoidance. “In the quiet space between spoken words lurks uncertainty,” she observed in a recent Psychology Today article.
Human beings generally don’t embrace uncertainty well. What we don’t know, we can’t control—and what we can’t control casts us into an unsafe and insecure limbo, with anticipation about what might be said or how others will respond fueling anxiety.
Even when we’re by ourselves, silence can be ominous; we can’t escape our automatic thoughts, particularly the ones that spotlight fears and insecurities; this can cause rumination. Unstructured moments of silence can also make us aware of aspects of ourselves and of life that the structure of noise drowns out. Silence can wake us up to truth—truths that we may not want to acknowledge.
Just as silence can be uncomfortable when we’re by ourselves, it can also be uncomfortable in relationships. Yet listening to silence—and being able to listen to silence with those we love—is key to flourishing friendships. One thing that is often overlooked is that a truly great friend is someone you can be silent with – someone you trust enough to simply be still in his or her presence. But this is incredibly difficult for Americans. As Michele DeMarco explains (again, in her recent Psychology Today article) a four second pause in a conversation is enough for Americans to start feeling awkward and insecure. By contrast, “Japanese people are happy to sit in silence with others for up to 8.2 seconds.”
Does our discomfort with silence contribute to shallow relationships? Perhaps. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom believes that leaning into the silence with those we love may indicate the deepest form of friendship, and even intimacy. Here’s what he writes in his book Courage to Pray:
An encounter does not become deep and full until the two parties to it are capable of being silent with one another. As long as we need words and actions, tangible proof, this means we have not reached the depth and fulness we seek. We have not experienced the silence which enfolds two people in common intimacy. It goes deep down, deeper than we knew we were, an inner silence where we encounter God, and with God and in God our neighbor.
In this state of silence we do not need words to feel close to our companion, to communicate with him in our deepest being, beyond ourselves to something which unites us. And when the silence is deep enough, we can begin to speak from its depths, but carefully and cautiously so as not to break it by the noisy disorder of our words. Then our thought is contemplative.
And that brings us back to the anecdote I opened with from Robert Cardinal Sarah’s The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise. In his introduction, Nicholas Diat reflected on the friendship between the Cardinal and Brother Vincent, the monk whose disease prevented him from speaking. “This friendship was born in silence, it grew in silence, and it continued to exist in silence.” That silence continued after Brother Vincent died.
The meetings with Brother Vincent were a fragment of eternity. We never doubted the importance of each of the minutes spent with him. Silence made it possible to raise every sentiment toward the most perfect state. When it was necessary to leave the abbey, we knew that Vincent’s silence would make us stronger to confront the world’s noises.
On that Sunday in spring when Brother Vincent joined the angels of heaven, the cardinal wished to come to Lagrasse. A great calm reigned over the whole monastery. The Brother’s silence had descended upon the places that he had known.
Further Reading: