A rustling of paper 

The squeak of the chair 

The cough 

The sniff and sneeze 

The dropped pencil 

The ruler being placed on the desk 

The buzz of the electric light 

The hum of the traffic outside 

The wind and rain on the windows 

The voice saying: “Stop writing please boys”! 

On the board outside in large red letters on  the white background SILENCE — EXAMINATION IN PROGRESS. Complete silence is hardly possible. 

The history of silence, ironically it seems,  starts, as physicists say with the “big bang” — I  say ironically because there was no one there to  hear it unless you believe in God and since the big  bang may have happened in a vacuum, there was  no sound. 

Our lives more than ever are filled with sound;  it seems as though we cannot do without  distractions; from the mp3s to the music that  invades our lives. We need to have space, peace  and quiet. 

John Cage 

4′33″ (pronounced Four minutes, thirty-three  seconds or, as the composer himself referred to it, Four, thirty-three) is a three-movement  composition by American avant-garde composer  John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1952  for any instrument (or combination of  instruments), and the score instructs the performer  not to play the instrument during the entire  duration of the piece throughout the three  movements (the first being thirty seconds, the  second being two minutes and twenty-three  seconds, and the third being one minute and forty  seconds). Although commonly perceived as “four  minutes thirty-three seconds of silence” — the  piece actually consists of the sounds of the  environment that the listeners hear while it is  performed. Over the years, 4′33″ became Cage’s  most famous and most controversial composition.  The writer composer is trying to show that there is  no such thing as silence — that there is a  movement and dynamic — he invites us to listen. 

Silence sometimes has a bad press in the  Bible — often when it is used, it refers to God  silencing His people to stop their mouths: 

He silences the lips of trusted advisers and  takes away the discernment of elders. (Job  12:20) 

But the king will rejoice in God; all who  swear by God’s name will praise him, while  the mouths of liars will be silenced. (Psalm  63:11) 

“Therefore, her young men will fall in the  streets; all her soldiers will be silenced in  that day,” declares the LORD. (Jeremiah  50:30) 

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the  Sadducees, the Pharisees got together….  (Matthew 22:34) 

In a positive way however, silence is the space in  which God speaks. A relationship between two  people involves dialogue — speaking and  listening. If we cannot listen we cannot have a  relationship. My silence allows others to speak  and your silence allows you to hear me. At the  very heart of God’s universe is a dialogue  between heaven and earth — from creation  onwards it has always been so. It is in fact what  happens in an iconic way with the Holy Liturgy.  When Christ came to earth there were those who  heard him and those that did not. If you want to  acquire a quality of reception on your radio, you  have to turn it on and tune in until your radio  receiver allows you to hear. Our hearts, minds and  souls are like radio receivers — if you want to  acquire a quality of prayer, you must tune your  heart towards God in a qualitative receptive  silence. 

Silence between notes makes music, silence  between words makes language — otherwise we  have cacophony and noise. Any teacher can vouch  for that truth and every pupil knows it. 

We need space and silence. When the desert  father went into the silence of the desert in the  fourth century they found the devil and  themselves before they found God. When Jesus  went into the desert he was tempted too by the  voice of the devil. St Seraphim went into the  desert of the Northern Thebaid in Russia as a  hermit but not before he had learned obedience  and humility within a community. Without  obedience to a rule one would go mad. Silence  can be torture and is a torture with white noise.  Yet in solitude we can listen to other things — the  birds of the air, the wind, the sea — we never have  complete silence for the whole of Creation is  either singing or groaning. We can be part of a  communal silence in the monastic tradition — the  silence of a community is a dynamic silence — it  is not the silence of the one — the monolith — but of corporate sharing— full and replete — like  the dynamic of the Holy Trinity. 

The definition that Metropolitan Kallistos  gives of prayer is, I think, so valuable — “I just  sit and look at God and He just sits and looks at  me.” Sometimes words are unnecessary — when  one is in love with another person words  sometimes becomes an interruption to that shared mutual appreciation. 

Prayer is a relationship with God and an  encounter with the real world not limited by time  and space — it is not two dimensional but brings  us into the very reality of our being. It brings us  into contact with those invisible dimensions  which interpenetrate our life. For life lived  without prayer, without God is only two  dimensional — it is a flat world and it is lived in  relationship only to self. But in fact Visible and  Invisible coexist as fire is present in red hot iron  as hydrogen and oxygen co-exist to bring us thirst  quenching water. They are not mutually exclusive. 

Prayer as Metropolitan Antony Bloom said in  “Courage to Pray” is an end to isolation — it is  living our life with someone. Prayer makes us  aware of God’s presence which we would not be  if we did not pray — like switching the radio on  and tuning in we have to make the effort to hear  God speaking. Indeed he who does not pray is in  isolation — the more we pray the more we realise  our need upon God — the reality of our vulnerable  state of mortality comes to the for, but at the same  time we begin to appreciate more grace and divine  support. Prayer does not change God — prayer  changes us, because it is God the Holy Spirit  praying in us. C. S. Lewis, that great friend of  Orthodoxy, expresses it like this in his poem on  Prayer: 

Master they say that when I seem 

To be in speech with you, 

Since you make no replies, it’s all a

dream – One talker aping two. 

They are half right, but not as they 

imagine; rather, I 

Seek in myself the things I meant to

say, And lo! The wells are dry. 

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake 

The listener’s role, and through 

My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake

The thoughts I never knew. 

And thus you neither need reply 

Nor can; thus while we seem 

Two talking, thou art One forever, and I

No dreamer, but thy dream. 

– C.S. Lewis 

So we need to distinguish between negative  silence, which is isolation from God, and positive quietude — calm, hesychia — which is union with  God. The experienced use of mental prayer (or  prayer of the heart), requiring solitude and quiet,  is called “Hesychasm” (from the Greek “hesychia”, meaning calm, silence), and those practicing it  were called “hesychasts.” “A sign of spiritual life  is the immersion of a person within himself and  the hidden workings within his heart.” 

“Acquire a peaceful spirit, and around you  thousands will be saved.” (St Seraphim of  Sarov.) 

In our busy life bombarded by sound — we value  things by what we do, what is achieved, the end  product, the target fulfilled, the box ticked, but  perhaps rather than the measure of doing perhaps  we need to recalibrate our lives into being — after  all we are not human doings but human beings.  We should try to set aside at least half an hour  each day for quiet reflection and application:  SILENCE — EXAMINATION IN PROGRESS – — since we shall experience it sooner or later: 

[The Seventh Seal and the Golden  Censer] When he opened the seventh seal,  there was silence in heaven for about half an  hour. (Revelation 8:1) 

Eν Χριστώ 

Fr. Jonathan 

ابونا جوناثان