Stillness Archives - Bob on Books

“Blaise Pascal Versailles” by unknown; a copy of the painture of François II Quesnel, which was made for Gérard Edelinck en 1691. – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.–Blaise Pascal

I’ve come across this quote several times recently. I suspect for many of us, Pascal sounds like a real downer. At first glance this statement seems to say we only have two alternatives: misery or sitting in a quiet room alone.

I wonder if part of what makes this hard is the sitting in quiet. What does it say that if we cannot sit for any length of time without sound or the visual cacophony of images and text that bombard us on phones, tablets, computers and flatscreens. Now even our cars have touch screens and blue tooth connections to our phones. I’m guilty of this as the next as I see the steady stream on twitter of natural disasters, human-made crises, and unspeakably horrible things that people do to each other. And I wonder at times if it makes us miserable–or at least miserably heavy with bearing a load of terrible knowledge that in other times only the God of the universe carried.

Then there is the challenge of just sitting. What is it in us that makes us so restless that we must always be doing something? In our restlessness are we running to or running from something? I can’t help but wonder if for many if it is the latter–running from the fear of our own insignificance, running from the fear of our own mortality. We are miserable in driven lives, and we often haven’t stopped long enough to even name what is driving us.

We don’t want to be alone. I suspect it is not just a fear of loneliness, which may sometimes be at its greatest in a crowd, but rather of who we will meet when we are alone. We are afraid to be alone with our thoughts and ourselves. Will we like and will we love what we find. Yet we are miserable to know that we alone, each of us, are indeed beloved.

We are not only miserable because we cannot sit in a quiet room alone. We inflict great misery on others in our own restlessness. We consume more than we need. We demand what others cannot give us. Sometimes our frustration flairs into destructive anger. Our restlessness turns into insatiable ambition that relentlessly drives others struggling under the burden of “never good enough.”

Would it be different if we spent some time sitting in quiet rooms alone? I don’t know, but it does make sense that miserable people cannot bring peace and wholeness and wellness into the broken places of the world. Psalm 46:10 says, “be still and know that I am God.” Some of my richest moments sitting alone have been when I’ve realized there is a God and it is not me and that I don’t have to manage the universe, invent my own significance, or wonder about my belovedness.

Sometimes, I’ve led others into stillness with these words, removing a word or phrase each time I say it until I simply say “be”. It can be a wonderful thing to connect with the being of my humanness. We aren’t human doings! It is really OK to take time just “to be”.

What I said in the beginning does indeed suggest two alternatives: misery or sitting in a quiet room alone. Except these are not equally dismal alternatives. The quiet room can be the gateway to joy and connectedness and belovedness. And that’s not so bad!

As a petulant child, I can remember saying “leave me alone!” Yet I might have silently added in my head, “but not too long.” This Sunday, Pastor Rich talked about the Christian alone and how rare it actually is to be alone. Some of this has to do with the myriad distractions in our lives–our work, families, and an ever more ubiquitous technology. The latter is sometimes a paradox as we are connected to the world digitally and more socially cut off than ever.

Alone often seems to equate with loneliness. And yet sometimes I’ve felt most lonely in a crowd of people, and not at all lonely by myself. What is harder though is being alone, and unplugged. For ten seconds, there is the blessed silence of alone–and then the thoughts come. Sometimes it is recalling a task that I need to accomplish and it is relatively easy to add that to a “to do” list and return to silence. Sometimes it can be a fairly constructive process of mentally chewing over a problem or thinking through an upcoming presentation and beginning to experience the gelling of my thoughts.

What can be harder are some of the other kinds of thoughts. At least for me, and this may reveal my own dysfunctionality, the thoughts can be of shortcomings or failings–the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” kind of accusations that remind me that I could be a better person than I am. Or it can be thoughts of the tempting sort as I become aware of hunger and other desires. No wonder it is easy to open up the computer or turn on the radio.

What sometimes seems to help is remembering that I am alone…and not alone. I am not just with my thoughts but with the God who knows my thoughts, and neither runs away in horror or hammers me into oblivion. Instead he invites me to confess them, the word “confess” meaning “to agree with.” Somehow, acknowledging my failings, my frustrations, my desires, my anxieties seems to bring me to a place where i can let go of them into God’s care–kind of like telling your dad about something that was really bugging you as a kid, and then somehow knowing it would be all right. Dad knew.

Sometimes just to get to this point is blessed relief. But sometimes we might experience something more. That is when silence and aloneness leads to stillness. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Sometimes, I believe there is a point in aloneness where no words are needed, where our clamoring thoughts for just a moment are stilled, and we are just being with the God who is “I am”. We are both in wonder in the presence of the Holy One, and basking in the delight of being the beloved of the Father.

And this perhaps is the point where we might “hear” God. It might be a scripture that comes to mind. Perhaps a person comes to mind to call, or pray for, or visit. Sometimes there is nothing but being alone in the Presence, and attentive to whatever may come in the hours ahead. Rich observed that when we’ve been attentive to our thoughts and attentive to God, then we are best prepared to be attentive to others and truly enter into community.

Where do I get alone? Rich’s suggestion that if no where else we might find aloneness in the toilet might be the answer for some. For me, it is getting up in the early morning and sitting in a rocker with my first cup of coffee. Sometimes, it is a long meandering walk. And sometimes, it seems to be working out my thoughts in writing–with the “new mail” sounds muted. Wherever and however it is, somehow aloneness and stillness seems to be health for us and for our communities.

A good friend of ours teaches me much about the wonder of being alone, quiet, waiting. She writes a blog called QuietKeepers. I would commend it to give you a taste of the riches of coming to the place of quiet.

This post was also posted today at our church’s Going Deeper blog.