The Power of the Pause
Gregorian Chant, Leisure, and the Joy of Going Slow
Sometime between 1857 and 1859, the French painter, Jean-François Millet, completed his oil painting L'Angélus. This work shows a man and a woman ending their workday in the fields to pray the Angelus, the traditional prayer said by faithful Catholics three times a day (at 6:00 am, 12:00 pm, and 6:00 pm). In the fading daylight, the spire of a church can be seen in the distance. The bells of this church would have called the couple to end their work, signaling the time of prayer.
The signs of work are all around these peasants—the field where they had been working, their tools, a basket of potatoes recently harvested. Yet Millet’s painting is not about work but its cessation. It is about the inward calm that emerges when one turns from busyness to prayer, from labor to what Jesus called the “one thing needful” (Luke 10:42).
Inspired by Millet’s recollections of his grandmother saying the Angelus, the painting gives one the sense that prayer is not so much a pause from work, but that work is a pause from the real action of life, namely prayerful leisure.
“Leisure” wrote the German Catholic philosopher, Josef Pieper (1904–1997), “is a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality: only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear.”
Many may be unfamiliar with this older meaning of leisure that Pieper described. It is a sign of the times that the concept of leisure has almost completely collapsed into mere amusement, while modern terms that most closely approximate the older concept (e.g., meditation, mindfulness) possess a self-referential quality quite at odds with the more classical understanding.
*I am Eastern Orthodox, and I came into the church through the Byzantine tradition of Orthodox Christianity. The term “Byzantine” comes from the name of the ancient city of Byzantion (later renamed “Constantinople”), from which the eastern portion of the Roman Empire derived its name, “The Byzantine Empire.” But Byzantine has also come to be synonymous for things that are complex and intricately detailed, as when we say, “the Paris sewer system is one of Byzantine complexity.” Byzantine Christian worship joins both these senses: it retains the Christian liturgical practices of the Byzantine empire but also enjoys a complexity that is, well, Byzantine.
When I first started attending Byzantine worship, I was struck by the detailed visual and auditory stimuli. Many churches have icons covering every square inch of the wall and strive to have sound happening during every part of the service. It’s a sensory feast of Christ-centered busyness, rich in decorative detail and embellishment.
I had a very different experience on St. Patrick’s Day 2023 when I visited St. Patrick’s Orthodox Church in Bealeton Virginia for the first time. To celebrate their patronal feast day, the church had a Vespers and a Solemn High Mass. Though the church is Orthodox, they followed the Roman rite instead of the Byzantine. One of the things that struck me is that during the services for Vespers when Psalms are chanted in the Gregorian style, a notable caesura or pause occurs between each line of verse, adding a layer of stillness to the prayers.
The same stillness is evident in the church décor at St. Patrick’s. Designed in the more gothic style of English churches, the church interior reflected an aesthetic of simplicity, with only four icons in front and with the side walls containing only the Stations of the Cross. The interior design, like the silent pauses, was unnerving but beautiful.
We tend to think of pause as intermediating between one activity and the next, as a means for reaching what will follow. Similarly, our words for unfilled space on a wall, such as “gap” or “emptiness" suggest something that hasn’t yet been filled, a potency waiting to be actualized. But what if stillness is not a means but an end? What if silence is not an absence but a fullness?
The pauses in Gregorian chant, like the stillness in Millet’s painting L'Angélus, suggest such a fullness.
*The origins of the liturgical caesura go back to the Hebrew poetry of the Psalms. Unlike the poetry with which we are most familiar, Hebrew poetry does not rhyme and lacks meter. Instead, Hebrew verse employs a variety of literary mechanisms, including chiastic structures and parallelism. Sometimes parallelism can occur for an entire Psalm, where an opening thought is echoed by an ending one. For example, Psalm 103 both begins and ends with “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” But parallelism also occurs within a Psalm where one thought is introduced and then developed or echoed by a parallel or related thought. For example,
“The heavens are telling the glory of God
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”
(Psalm 19:1)“The Lord will command his lovingkindness in the morning,
and at night his song shall be with me, a prayer to the God of my life.”
(Psalm 42:8)
Between each line there is a natural place to pause. In Gregorian chant, the suggested pause is indicated by an asterisk, like this:
“The heavens are telling the glory of God *
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”
The pause at the asterisk traditionally takes about two seconds or a little more. Some medieval treatises say the pause should last as long as it would take to whisper “Ave Maria.” These pauses help the chanter not to go too fast while also underscoring the contemplative nature of the poetry. But beyond whatever pragmatic value it serves, the pause reinforces the sense of stillness – a stillness that is a fullness rather than an absence.
The pause also helps underscore the content of the Psalms by highlighting the parallelism. The pause allows the mind to grasp the import of the opening cadence before moving on. This doesn’t involve thinking and analyzing the words, but just taking it in and letting the meaning wash over you. Here is how Vilma Little describes the effect of the pause in The Sacrifice of Praise: An Introduction to the Divine Office:
Parallelism requires that the first clause of the parallel be made to stand out in recitation, so that the mind may fully grasp the meaning before the voice passes on to the second clause. This is achieved by means of the silence at the asterisk preceded by a slight broadening of the meditation cadence. The silence is therefore an integral part of the form of parallelism and may not be suppressed in choral recitation.
I think we can learn a lot from these pauses, even beyond the context of worship. In fact, if you haven’t already noticed it by now, I am punctuating this article with such pauses – places where I encourage you as the reader to take a deep breath, and maybe even temporarily put the article down and reflect.
*
I have a friend who is an information junky. Let’s call him Kevin. He has an amazing ability to absorb information from so many sources: social media, YouTube, podcasts, audiobooks, newspapers. If I need information on a topic, Kevin is often the first person I call up.
At first, I envied Kevin for all the information in his head. But over the years it has become clear that Kevin’s breadth of knowledge has come at a terrible price. Throughout the seventeen years we’ve known each other, I’ve watched Kevin get faster and faster. Now he feels he must speed through life in order to keep up with everything. When he listens to audiobooks he plays them 1.5 to 3 times faster than normal; movies twice as fast; some YouTube videos four to five times as fast.
But Kevin has paid a price for this, for he can no longer live at a human speed. If someone invites him to watch a movie, it drives him crazy because the pace of real life feels unusually slow. He has literally trained himself to go at inhuman speeds. But why do I say inhuman. Is there an optimal human speed of life?
*
God has filled our world with many beautiful gifts which help tether us to natural rhythms. From cycles of day and night, to the waxing and waning of the moon, to the seasons of the year, our bodies are tethered to the beautiful rhythms of the cosmos. But there are two particular gifts within our own body that offer rhythm at a particularly human scale and help dictate a speed of life that is humane. One of these is our heartbeat. The other is our breath. Significantly, however, these rhythms are not fixed like a metronome but varied.
Consider breathing. Breathing fast and steady is associated with states of high arousal, such as what we might experience during times of exercise, or in a stressful conversation. There is nothing wrong with being aroused to a quicker breath. In fact, fast breathing is integral to the regular exercise that is part of a healthy routine. Moreover, our ability to quickly move into fast and steady breathing is part of how we, as a species, activate the sympathetic nervous system for responding to danger, and thus survive. But the type of breathing that is restorative is slow and varied. As Saint Nilus of Sora put it in a discussion of the Prayer of the Heart when summarizing the work of St. Symeon the New Theologian, “moderate your breathing so as to breathe as seldom as possible.” And again, “For the saints teach us to lengthen the beathing by not breathing too often, for this method is quite effective to bring the mind to a recollected state.”
Healthy breathing is not only slow, but varied. Think of the gentle ebb and flow of waves on the seashore as opposed to the rise and fall of a mechanical apparatus.
The same gentle variation occurs in our heart rate. A healthy heart rate is variable, again like waves on the seashore. Scientists who have studied the heart use the term “heart rate variability” (HRV) to describe the fluctuation in the intervals between adjacent heartbeats. Peer-reviewed research curated at the HeartMath Institute has found that a high state of HRV (also called “heart coherence”) is associated with feelings of wellbeing and gentleness. If you’ve felt a warm feeling in your heart when you are holding a baby or during times when you felt particularly cherished by a loved one, that is HRV. In physiological terms, this type of coherent heartbeat activates the parasympathetic nervous system that enables the type of peace necessary for the body’s restorative functions. Even more importantly, a state of HRV enables us to be sensitive to the environment, empathetic with other people, and to be both relaxed and alert at the same time.
On the other hand, when we are under stress, the interval between heartbeats tends to be more regular, like a metronome. This is a condition described in psychocardiology as “incoherence.” Incoherence is often stimulated in scary movies by playing a steady heartbeat (thud, thud, thud) to create a sense of suspense. Incoherence is not measured by how fast the heartbeat is, but how rigid and mechanical the beats are, measured by the interval between them.
Now here’s the really cool thing about this research: we can bring our heart rate into coherence by bringing loving attention to our breathing, especially when we slow down breathing to a gentle pattern that prioritizes long exhalations. Another practice that activates a coherent heart rate is gratitude, especially when we focus on something or someone we appreciate. (And if you need a guide for engaging in gratitude practices, I happen to have written a book that might help you.)
I can attest to the truth of this, as I have equipment that measures my heart rate variability that I purchased from the Institute of Heartmath. (I don’t get any money from the Heartmath institute by mentioning this, by the way). By letting go of the need to control and instead just being present with God in my breathing, I can measure in real time the improvement in my heart rate.
While the science of heart rate variability may seem technical and scientific, Cynthia Bourgeault has shown that it actually has an ancient pedigree going back to some of the Church Fathers. Dr. Trent Orfanos also discussed the theological underpinnings of HRV in his 2015 lecture for the Holistic Christian Woman conference.
But what does any of this have to do with Gregorian chant?
*
When sung in the Gregorian style, Psalmody occurs at the rhythm of breath. Each line of a Psalm is broken up into two parts with a pause in between to breathe. You say the first line, then pause in the middle and breathe, then say the second half. This breathing is not simply utilitarian like a trumpet player learning to breathe for better use of his instrument. Rather, the pause lasts about two and a half seconds—much longer than is strictly necessary for the activity of breathing. In other words, you are breathing very slowly. Moreover, the length between breaths is varied depending on how many words are in the line preceding the pause.
One of the reasons that Gregorian chant is so relaxing is that it naturally follows a pattern of slow breathing. It harmonizes the two primary rhythms of the body: the heart rate and breath.
Remember that a healthy heart rate is not a steady beat like a metronome. The same is true of the rhythm of Gregorian chant, which is why it cannot be easily transcribed into Western notation and time signatures. Rather, the words dictate the rhythm, which gives chanted Psalms a fluidity that again resembles waves on a seashore or the variability of a healthy heart rate. This fluctuation enables the music to draw your body as well as your mind and heart into its peaceful cadence. You can listen to an example, complete with the pauses, here.
These pauses feature in the services for Vespers, Matins and Lauds, based on the Psalms. But there are Gregorian chants for other occasions, and while these do not include the punctuated pauses, they retain the fluid quality that aligns with peaceful breathing and heartbeats. Here is the St. Patrick Orthodox Church choir singing Antiphons. Notice how, if you really surrender to the music with your full attention, your mind becomes tethered to a relaxed breath and heart rate.
The fact that the entire body is involved in chant is a beautiful way to invite both the chanters and the worshiper to get out of their heads, and to leave the realm of detached cognition for a more embodied experience rooted in attention and watchfulness. The importance of this mind-body coherence should not be under-estimated, since embodied living is one of the ways we defy the culture of The Machine. But more than that, by withdrawing the mind into the heart and breath, we get in touch with our inner selves. As Rembert Herbert points out in his book Entrances: Gregorian Chant in Daily Life:
The chant invites us to approach our inner selves in this new way, with an emphasis on the listening attention and watchfulness. We do not analyze what we see; we do not talk about it; we do not even form opinions about it. We simply try to consistently as we can to be attentive, to listen and watch.
The pauses facilitate this type of deep attention through honing the spiritual sense of listening.
*
Listening forms a key part of the good life. Yet as I have noted in my series on communication, today we face multitudinous pressures that militate against active listening. Rembert Herbert believes Gregorian chant—and in particular the periodic pauses—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… We breathe but, more importantly, we are attentive to that short silence before beginning the second half of the psalm. We listen actively but without any expectations. Especially in the beginning, we are not sure what we are listening for, and it is certain that we will not know whether we have received it, not until we have had years of experience. And even in that long run, we become aware of only a small part of what we receive. We must listen in faith until we begin to sense a kind of gentle refreshment in that moment…. In this condition, listening itself becomes easier because the mind is quieter and more open…. As St. Bernard points out, faithful listening leads naturally to strengthened inner vision—not mystical experience, but a state of gentle awareness of one’s inner condition.
“More important even than listening to each other, is listening to the silence between the phrases of the psalms. …faithful listening leads naturally to strengthened inner vision.”
*
I asked Father Patrick, priest of St. Patrick Orthodox Church, to explain why he introduced these pauses into the worship about two years ago. Given what I know of Fr. Patrick, I was not surprised that he started with metaphysics and cosmology.
“In his De Musica,” Fr. Patrick explained, “the 6th century Christian philosopher Boethius described three strata of music: music of the universe, music of the human body, and music made with instruments. Music of the universe, or the ‘music of the spheres,’ draws on the notion of celestial bodies orbiting in a harmonious cadence in accord with proper mathematical scales.”
Fr. Patrick continued:
Moving from macro to micro we come to musica humana. This is the music that Boethius describes as being internal to the human body. The human body is a microcosm of the cosmos, and just as God established a musical harmony in the universe, he has also established a music in our bodies through the rhythmic beat of our heart and breathing.
The key insight is that musica humana achieves its fitting telos when it reflects the musica universalis - when the cadence of our psalmody aligns with the human body’s heartbeat and breathing. Then when we pray the psalms we reflect a divinely ordered harmony in time, at once cosmological and human.
Fr. Patrick went on to explain that in our corrupt state we either lag behind or rush ahead, yet seldom exist in perfect time, that is, in ordered harmony with our body and the cosmos.
“When we first introduced the pause into our liturgy at St. Patrick’s,” he continued, “some people found it difficult, even tedious. Part of the tediousness of the pause certainly reflects our disordered relationship to time and inability to be present. Yet through ascesis and prayer we have the opportunity to participate in the re-ordering of the cosmos, to return it to sacred harmony. Because mankind is a microcosm of the cosmos, this begins by reordering the context of our existence, namely time. Prayer reforms and heals us when we submit to it and learn how to be fully present. Submitting to the pause in humility can be transformative in this way. It can help us to be truly present where Christ dwells, it can fill the moment and our life which is lived in the moment with meaning which chases away boredom and anxiety and helps us to enter the joy of God’s ever-present presence.”
*
In her book Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna 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 is 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 are 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 stillness.
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—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.
Back to Dr. Lembke. In a conversation with Dr. Andrew Huberman, she 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.
I don’t like the phrase “doing nothing.” I prefer the more classical term “leisure.”
*
Some of my readers may be familiar with the German philosopher Josef Pieper (1904–1997), and his classic book Leisure, the Basis of Culture.
Originally published in 1952, this short book was Pieper’s response to moves in the post-war era towards a society of “total work.” In the emerging prosperity of post-war capitalism, no less than the collectivist visions of Marxist societies, human flourishing was coming to be defined by work. There was a corresponding danger that rest would come to be seen as simply the cessation of labor, valued for its restorative function in enabling man to return to work. For still others, rest offered an opportunity for recreation, as if the purpose of work is simply to buy time for play.
Pieper argued that the answer to all of these—the cult of total work, the notion that we rest in order to eventually get back to work, or the infantile cult of youth with its idolizing of recreation—is the idea of leisure.
We don’t use the term “leisure” much anymore, and when we do it tends to differ little from idleness or recreation. Yet Pieper taught that the older notion of leisure is more akin to contemplation, to the type of receptive stillness that we might find in the artist or the spiritual mystic. To be leisurely in this older sense is to adopt a frame of mind that is open to the bedrock ordering of things, an attitude of “inward calm,” and a willingness to slow down and listen to the essence of things.
Leisure might take form in any number of activities as well as non-activity. It might be found in the type of receptive stillness that is the precondition for appreciating works of beauty. It might be found in close relationships, such as a husband and wife sitting still holding hands, each enjoying the other’s company without needing to say, do, or expect anything from the other. It might be found by going for a walk in the mountains without the intention of satisfying any useful goal like exercise or restoration. It might also be found by simply sitting in your backyard with your rosary or prayer rope while quietly watching the clouds pass by. In each case, leisure involves a turn from that which is useful to that which is permanent.
Leisure is the natural opposite to sloth, or what the ancients called acedia. The restlessness of both sloth and boredom reflects what Pieper termed “that deep-seated lack of calm which makes leisure impossible.”
Sloth can be hard to recognize in contemporary society because we have an abundance of tools that enable us to be busy while being slothful. If Pieper were alive today, he might well observe that our common recreations and chosen pastimes—everything from computer games to constant connectivity and an endless diet of distractions—may sometimes mitigate against work, but they always mitigate against leisure.
Sloth can be hard to recognize in contemporary society because we have an abundance of tools that enable us to be busy while being slothful.
In the Middle Ages they sloth was held to be the source for both “leisurelessness” (the incapacity to enjoy leisure) as well as the ultimate cause of “work for work’s sake.” This, incidentally, is precisely why, if you have a family member who remains glued to his phone, you will not solve his underlying malaise by simply making him get a job or forcing him or her to help with household chores, as beneficial as such activities will likely be for him or her. Rather, the person who is glued to his or her phone needs to first recover the ability to enjoy leisure, especially that aspect of leisure that is most undermined by an environment of constant digital noise, namely the learned ability to be still, which all the ancients believed to be a precondition to contemplation.
For a culture addicted to noise and the cult of busyness, the contemplative life may initially come as a shock. To quote again from Pieper:
The act of philosophizing, genuine poetry, any aesthetic encounter, in fact, as well as prayer, springs from some shock. And when such a shock is experienced, man senses the non-finality of this world of daily care; he transcends it, takes a step beyond it.
*
Contemplation also is greatly misunderstood today. Even as we have reduced leisure to having fun, we have reduced contemplation to thinking. As such, the modern concept of contemplation is often divorced from both the body and from the right-ordering of the affections that will ultimately culminate in beatific communion with God. St. Gregory the Great wrote that contemplation “savors now, by means of a deep inner taste, the rest to come.” The saint added, “For even though by action we accomplish something good, nevertheless by contemplation we awake to the desire for heaven.”
And that brings us back to Gregorian Chant and Millet’s L'Angélus.
*
The couple in the painting have laid down the tools of their trade to pray. But they are doing more than merely praying. They are participating in the rest that is to come (Hebrews 4:1-7), balancing the active life with the contemplative one, the latter anticipating the Beatific Vision. The key word here is “balance.” To quote again from Rembert Herbert’s Entrances:
The fathers believed that…perfection—wholeness—did not lie in leaving the active life behind. Pure contemplation was not considered possible in this world. Perfection lay in finding the proper relationship or balance between the two.
And that brings us back to chant. Herbert suggests that the pause in Gregorian chant enables us to embrace the balance between contemplation and action.
One could describe the chant as an exercise in the search for this balance. The musical material of the chant contains both elements of speech (activity and elements of quiet (contemplation). The elements of quiet are found both within the music itself and in the pauses which the music requires regularly, especially in the recitation of psalms. Where chant is concerned, the silence is actually part of the music, and…one has to learn to handle the silence just as one must handle melodies and rhythms….
In general, we can understand the articulation of the text as the “active” life of the singer, and careful listening and watchfulness during the recitation, as well as during pauses, as the “contemplative.” For singers who have been trained to be sensitive to this process, there is no mistaking these two different directions…. Singers discover further that each of these directions depends on the other. The feeling of recollection—a sense of life in the silence—doesn’t appear until a certain freedom of recitation is sustained. As long as the recitation drags, or rushes nervously, or sinks under excess vocal weight, the silences between phrases will appear to be no more than the chance to grab a breath. Likewise, even if the recitation is light, quick, and natural, but the choir ignores or rushes through the pauses, the opportunities for attending to silence, the feeling of a gently nourishing energy will never appear in the verses. But when the balance of recitation and silence is achieved, singers discover that here, too, the contemplative element is the more precious: the key to the life of the chant lies in attention to silence.
I think we all identify intuitively with the nourishing power of silence. No matter how much our lives have been colonized by hassle, it is a natural human reaction to linger over the things we love.
In worship, while the contemplative element may be more precious, it is also more difficult to attain in its fullness. This was impressed upon me recently when I was visiting an Orthodox church in Idaho that follows the Byzantine rite. One friend, on hearing I had been attending a Western Rite parish in Virginia, exclaimed, “How can you stand it? Their matins service is much shorter than ours yet takes twice as long! Whenever I attend the Roman rite it drives me crazy because of how slow everything is.” I understand this reaction – it is sometimes hard to go slow. I discovered that for myself when I recently transitioned to the Roman office of Compline for my evening prayers, as given in the Monastic Diurnal. Though I am not singing the compline Psalms, I still observe the pauses marked by the asterisk. Over time, I have found that these pauses are forming me to experience the act of praying differently. Instead of simply rushing through so I can go to bed, I am learning that prayer is something to linger over.
Further Reading