Spiritual Reflection
STILLNESS, SILENCE AND SOLITUDE By the Rev. Mary Lessmann
Our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in “muchness” and “manyness,” he will rest satisfied. - Richard Foster
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e are entering summer, and so for many of us the pace of life is becoming a little less hectic. But in today’s world, that might not be saying much. We are people who live very busy lives. And while we might sigh heavily as we tell people how busy we are, we often wear our busyness like a badge of honor. We determine how well we’re ‘doing’ life by the fullness of our calendar; by the number of experiences we’ve lined up; by the number of nights we’re not home without plans. And the world around us seems determined to affirm that value system. We are regularly reminded of the need to check in with others on social media, of the new hobbies and skills we should be developing, of baseline acquisitions necessary for a happier life.
to rest and to be in silence and solitude. And we know that Jesus desires that his followers do the same (Mk 6:31). And yet the world will never encourage this in us. We live in a world where stillness, silence and solitude are in short supply. At best they are seen as unproductive and frivolous; at worst, they are seen as suspect.
And yet we know this is not the example of Jesus. We know that in the midst of Jesus’ busy ministry of healing and teaching and group meals and traveling around the countryside he regularly went off to a quiet place
In stillness we learn to stop doing, stop producing, stop pleasing people, stop entertaining ourselves and stop obsessing. In the hamster-wheel pace of our lives, we can avoid self-reflection. Sometimes the busyness of
THE ARCHANGEL | Summer 2022
If we would nurture our relationship with God, if we would become more the people he has created us to be, we would cultivate these disciplines in our life. We should not be surprised that it is difficult for us, that it feels like swimming upstream, because they are disciplines. If they were easy to live into, they wouldn’t be disciplines, they would be entertainment or fun experiences. So how do we live into Jesus’ desire that we create margins of stillness, silence and solitude in our lives while spending our days and weeks and years in a world that will not affirm that for us?
