And a Hush Fell Over Us

Students with bags stuffed with books trample quietly in to the chapel, weary-eyed and slouching. They grab pillows and plop their bodies down to the ground, some more gracefully than others. We form a circular shape around the altar candles; our breath echoes back and forth between each other as we wait for the Taizé service to begin.

A single voice breaks through the silent anticipation. The voices around me gather me up, they soothe the wrinkles around my eyes, they massage my vocal chords until suddenly my voice is as pure as the one that began.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

The soprano voice to my left reminds me of a blooming pale yellow daffodil. The softer voice to my left is like a soft autumn rain.

Then comes time for silence. The silence feels long today, but that is only because my body is sleep deprived and a struggle to maintain a balance between alertness and contemplative inner peace.

I think back to the many silences I endured at the ashram in Greece this past spring. Perhaps the most painful component of practicing silence in a group of meditative practitioners is you have no control over how long the silence will be. You hear the beginning bell and then you just have to wait...and wait...and wait... for a second bell to break the silence. It could last for ten minutes or it could last for four hours, but you must endure.

At first when I realized the lack of control I had, I found myself trying to fight the silence. I would try to count to ten with deep breaths, but I found I would often lose count before I got to seven. Finally I learned to release and to stop fighting the oppressive nature of the silence and instead embrace the silent energy of all of the people around me. I would breathe in and imagine everyone breathing in with me, filling my heart and igniting inside a single blue flame. As I exhaled, we would softly blow out the fire so the cycle could begin again.

The Taizé website (http://www.taize.fr/en) explains the importance of silence and meditative prayer:

Silence and love

Christ says: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12). We need silence in order to welcome these words and put them into practice. When we are agitated and restless, we have so many arguments and reasons not to forgive and not to love too easily. But when we "have calmed and quieted our soul", these reasons turn out to be quite insignificant. Maybe we sometimes avoid silence, preferring whatever noise, words or distraction, because inner peace is a risky thing: it makes us empty and poor, disintegrates bitterness and leads us to the gift of ourselves. Silent and poor, our hearts are overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit, filled with an unconditional love. Silence is a humble yet secure path to loving.