Can/Should Hermits Sing Office??

[[Dear Sister, I do have a question, or rather a question put to me by some people. My prayer-life is structured around the Liturgy of the Hours, which I chant/recite and sing out loud on my own. When hearing about how I pray the Hours vocally, the questioners (priests) could not get their heads wrapped around the fact that I could try and live a life of silence and then not pray the Hours silently(!). I think their surprise mostly has to do with how they perceive silence and the silent life. Their question has set me thinking. I am planning to give them an answer.

There are some points I want to address in my answer. - The difference between personal prayer and the prayer of the Church. - How the Church’s liturgy presupposes a holistic (non-dualistic) anthropology. Celebration/worship is therefore not just something cerebral or disembodied, but uses all our senses and physical, mental and emotional faculties, and sanctifies our entire person. - How silence can lead to song, and in fact is a prerequisite for true sound/song/speech/word/Word. - How the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours speaks of moments of ‘Sacred Silence’ and in doing so therefore implies vocal prayer. - How although external silence is an important instrument in prayer-life, it does not determine and qualify the silence of solitude.

How would you react? What would be the points you would want to make clear? Perhaps you feel the Hours should indeed be prayed silently by a hermit? And if so, why? Are these suitable questions for a nice long blog-posting?! I hope so👌 If they are, there is no rush. First enjoy Christmas as well as enjoying rounding off your Mark-studies! (I have a another question up my sleeve, but will reserve that for 2021.....)]]

Many thanks for your question and your patience. We did finish the Gospel of Mark about a week and a half ago and are preparing to do the Gospel of Matthew now. But I have some weeks before that needs to be ready so here I am, finally getting to your question!!! Moreover, it's my Feast Day (Conversion of  St Paul in case I don't get this finished this evening) so it's a very good day to think and write about singing Office and the place of singing more generally in my own life!

 When I think of the way folks reacted to you I would be inclined to react myself by laughing a bit and commenting on how little hermits and their lifestyle are understood today (and have been all through history for that matter)! All of your points are fine; any complete response would include them or some version of them. (I have a quibble or question regarding your use of the term "qualify" in your observation on the silence of solitude and its relation to physical or external silence, but I get your main point and agree with that.) What seems especially important to me are your emphases on the whole person and the relation of physical  or external silence to Word; the distinction (and overlap) between physical silence and what canon 603 calls "the silence of solitude" is also critical. In order to speak about these important elements, I would contextualize them within a theology of the obedient life (the life of prayer) and of human being as a dialogical reality or language "event" which is meant and called to mediate the presence of the real God in space and time. So, does the silence of eremitical life prevent hermits from singing Office? Why or why not?

First of all then, I suppose I would not say that I live a life of silence so much as I live a life of prayer centered on God which is open, attentive, and responsive to God. More, I live this life within an ecclesial context of physical solitude. That, of course absolutely requires physical silence, but important as it is, the eremitical life is not primarily about silence. If your friends, for instance, believe that silence is the overarching value of your life or is something you value without reference to a larger reality, viz, the call to obedient life, it could lead  to their misunderstand the nature of eremitical life. On the other hand, if they understand that it is seeking or being open to God that is primary,  that we are committed to learning to listen for/to as well as to respond fully to the One who reveals Godself in Christ to/in every person as well as in the whole of creation, they might have a bit easier time understanding the relative importance of silence and too, the difference between physical or external silence and the silence of solitude. 

My first point would be then that in the eremitic life obedience is more primary than silence; silence serves obedience in the eremitical life, both in terms of listening and in terms of being appropriately responsive. Both dimensions are included in the Christian notion of "hearkening" or "obedience". Thus, precisely because silence serves obedience (as does physical solitude in this context), it means that other things can and will relativize the hermit's physical silence. This is especially true if these things also contribute not only to her prayer, but to becoming God's own prayer in the world.

This last week I was rereading Wencel's book on Eremitic Life and I came across a passage I had once marked: "To search for God means above all to enter the way of faith and silence that releases the spring of prayer at the bottom of the human heart." I believe, though, that he would agree with me that once it is released, it may express itself in song. (It may also express itself in poetry, painting, music, writing, etc.) Wencel also identifies God as the original abyss of silence, and in the same sentence he refers to this same reality as a "song of love." Wencel understands the Mystery which is at the heart of eremitic life and finds no conflict in identifying the deepest silence one can know with the song of love it also is. He is not concerned about the paradox he has constructed here because he knows these two things held together in tension express a larger and ineffable truth. Prayer shares the same paradox and is moved by the same Mystery. Hermits know silence. They move in it and through it and look for it to help transform them into an expression of the "silence of solitude" -- something much richer than the sum of physical silence and aloneness. It seems to me then that as I point to and then celebrate the coming to be of that deeper, richer reality canon 603 calls  "the silence of solitude," it is entirely  appropriate, even necessary that one will often do so in song!

Another piece of my own thought on this is the notion that human beings are dialogical at their very core. We are, in Gerhard Ebeling's terms, "language events" --- brought into being by the Word/Logos of God and brought to ever greater maturity and articulateness by every lifegiving word spoken to us and every integral response we make. We are beings who are summoned into existence and called to ever greater authenticity and fullness of being by God and our lives are shaped by the way we hearken to this Presence. We begin our lives incapable of speech or of choosing our own direction or allowing God to shape our lives. Circumstances may keep us relatively incapable, relatively mute -- though at the same time they may wound us so seriously that we are little more than a defensive "No!" or a scream of anguish. When we are loved, however --- consistently, truly, and profoundly loved, more and more we will find our own voice and express the love that has called us to growing wholeness. 

Sometimes our expression of this true existence will be silence, but it will not be the silence of muteness. Rather it will be the silence of a heart too full of awe and gratitude to express with words. Other times we will (try to) find words for it and write poetry or prose commensurate with what we are trying (and always failing) to express. And sometimes it will be in music or song. This does not mean we only sing when we are joyful; sometimes what we sing will have the character of lament, for instance. What is always true is that as we respond to the prayer God is making of us, we use the form of response which best suits the situation and who we are at that moment in time. Just as we learn to pray our lives, so too do we learn to sing our lives. Again, it seems appropriate then that some of our prayer, but especially psalms and canticles be sung when that fits the circumstances.

I do sing Office (especially Compline or Night Prayer) --- unless I have a cold or (sometimes) am otherwise not feeling well. You are entirely correct that silence can lead to song and that it is a prerequisite to speech/word/ song. I remember in High School being taught in a music class that the rests (silences) in the music were as important as the notes because the rests helped transform noise into meaningful sound or music. The teacher pointed out that without rests (appropriate, measured silences) we would have only (meaningless) noise. If we are to become God's own prayers in our world, if we are to hear God and respond appropriately, then silence is critically necessary. We need silence to become an articulate expression of and response to God's own song of love. And if we are moved to sing in response, then sing we must. That is the way of genuine obedience; after all, c 603 hermits make vows of obedience, not silence!

I will leave this here for now. You have been more than patient and for right now this is all I have to add to the points you made so well. If I should think of something I left out I will add another post -- a kind of "part II" perhaps. I am well aware I have not spoken at all about the ecclesial nature of the consecrated hermit's vocation here and though there are a number of articles here about that, I well may need to do that as an enlargement on your own point re: private and liturgical prayer. At the same time I haven't said much here about the distinction between physical or external silence and the "silence of solitude" and I definitely may need to say more about that. Significantly, Canon 603 does not read "silence and solitude" but rather "the silence of solitude". The most important thing about it for the purposes of this post is that it is always richer than the apparent sum of its parts because eremitical solitude itself is not just about being alone, but about existing fully and integrally in an ongoing, active, dialogue with God (and all that is of God). In the meantime, I hope this finds you well and in good voice!!

A Contemplative Moment: Silence

Silence

 

is frightening, an intimation of the end, the grave yard of fixed identities. real silence puts any present understanding to shame, orphans from certainty; leads us beyond the well-known and accepted reality and confronts us with the unknown and previously unacceptable conversation about to break in upon our lives. Silence does not end skepticism but makes it irrelevant. Belief or unbelief or any previously rehearsed story meets the wind in the trees, the distant horn in the busy harbor, or the watching eye and listening ear of a puzzled loved one.

 

In silence, essence speaks to us of essence and asks for a kind of unilateral disarmament, our own essential nature slowly emerging as the defended periphery atomizes and falls apart. as the busy edge dissolves we begin to join the conversation through the portal of a present unknowing, robust vulnerability, revealing in the way we listen, a different ear, a more perceptive eye. an imagination refusing to come too early to a conclusion, and belonging to a different person than the one who first entered the quiet.

 

Out of the quiet emerges the sheer incarnational presence of the world, a presence that seems to demand a moving internal symmetry in the one breathing and listening equal to its own breathing listening elemental powers.

 

To become deeply silent is not to become still but to become tidal and seasonal, a coming and going that has its own inimitable, essential character, a story not fully told, like the background of the sea, or the rain falling or the river going on, out of sight, out of our lives. reality met on its own terms demands absolute presence, and absolute giving away, an ability to live on equal terms with the fleeting and the eternal, the hardly touchable and the fully possible, a full bodily appearance, a rested giving in and giving up; another identity braver, more generous and more here than the one looking hungrily for the easy, unearned answer.

 

by David Whyte,

Consolations, Nourishment, and Underlying

Meaning of Everyday Words

Why is Silence so Important to a Hermit's Witness?

[[Dear Sister, why is silence so important for the witness of a hermit? One hermit's blog writes a lot about hearing God speak to her and getting messages from Saints so I was wondering if that was typical? My pastor has spoken of silence being necessary to hear God speak to us in the depths of our hearts but that seems pretty different to me than having God send messages and making "assignments". Is silence part of the "experience of redemption" you recently said was so central to the hermit's life?]]

Really excellent questions --- especially the last one about the experience of redemption and silence. I think that silence is central to the hermit's experience of redemption and that it is an important piece of the witness she gives for precisely this reason. One of the really difficult experiences accompanying and often intensifying people's sufferings is the apparent silence of God. Folks who leave the Church often complain that their prayers went unanswered, that God was silent and unresponsive. They conclude either that God is unloving or uncaring, or perhaps that God is simply too remote, truly impersonal, and thus too, entirely irrelevant. They may similarly conclude that God is powerless or simply non-existent and that prayer is useless and the result of juvenile or at least naive wishfulness.

Novelists write powerfully about the silence of God and the way God is indicted by this. In the work, Silence, Shusako Endo pits the incredible suffering of the people against the apparent silence of God. Survivors of the Holocaust put God on trial because their prayers were apparently met with silence; they accused God of having failed to keep the covenant God had made with his people. They had been his People but the evidence of the holocaust's millions murdered indicated God had failed to be their God. The silence of God is one of those realities which challenges us most profoundly and to which our faith is most vulnerable. It is also a reality which is central to the eremitical life both as a challenging and penitential context expressing our yearning for God, and as a consoling element reflecting our wholeness and completion in God. Silence can be an expression of isolation, meaninglessness, and the seeming unresponsiveness of God or it can be an expression of the covenantal solitude in which we are completed as persons and come to quies, or shalom.

I can't say that God speaks TO me directly very often but I can say that God is frequently, even continuously speaking me, that is, calling my name and summoning me to fullness of life and wholeness. I have learned that most profoundly in silence and in the life that comes in silence. So many times silence reflected my own emptiness and incapacity --- just as it does with all of us. At one point before I became a hermit I thought I had reached the end of my strength, the end of my ability to see any meaningfulness in my life, any potential for serving God or his People. I had nothing to say except the single question, "WHY?!" and in asking this, I expected no real answers. It was most usually the silent cry of anguish I myself was. Only rarely was I able to pose it directly, to speak it aloud or claim it as my identity which called for an Other. Silence in those times was a terrible trial; but it was also a gift which opened me to a transcendent truth and love beyond anything I could have imagined.

In my own life I needed a God who would not simply answer my facile or sometimes desperate prayers but would instead embrace me in all of my poverty, emptiness, and inarticulateness, a God who would love me enough to bring life and  wholeness out of these. That required entering into these realities in silence to plumb their depths --- depths beyond words, thoughts, images, even beyond my more usual cries of anguish, apparent yearnings, etc both to meet God there and to open these realities to God. Isn't this the very nature of prayer Paul speaks of in Romans 8:26: [[the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;]] In time it (silence) became a necessary condition for the gift God would make of my life and the circumstances of that life. It became a piece of what my life witnesses to --- namely the importance of entering silence in all of its depths and painfulness precisely so that God can bring life out of death and an articulate and meaningful "word" even out of complete muteness. All of this is something that happens in silence.

As a result I generally distrust the notion of a spirituality which is or seems to be little more than a series of "messages" from God or "assignments" or "locutions," and "visions." I distrust this especially in one claiming to be a hermit. Not only are these seductive and potentially idolatrous, but, except in rare instances which are truly of God, they seem to me to be distractions from the silence of solitude. I don't think they are typical of eremitical spirituality at all. Hermits grapple with silence; more importantly though, they grapple with their own frailty and poverty in silence. They allow the absolute Silence and cosmic Song we know as God to embrace even their life's worst and most painful silences, and transfigure these so that they too may sing their part in what hermits call "the silence of solitude" --- the covenantal "quies" and communion with God the authentic hermit (indeed, the authentic human being) truly is.

As noted above, out of our personal and external silence and physical solitude comes EITHER what the tradition refers to as "the silence of solitude" and the achievement of quies or hesychasm which result when human emptiness and divine fullness meet one another and powerless muteness is embraced by the Love we know as God, OR our lives are and remain a searing indictment of God and God's silence. It is, I think, a terrible temptation in such circumstances to "hear" God speaking to us in locutions, to find God in visions and in the facile assurances of some fraudulent spirituality or shallow form of piety, but it is my experience that the revelation of God's presence and power generally comes in silence. (That is, it generally comes silently in a way which embraces and transfigures our own deepest silence.) Redemption itself comes in the meeting of our own profoundest silence which is deeper than, but encompasses all the joy and anguish, all the poverty and potentiality we know, and the incredibly fecund silence of the Love-in-Act which grounds and summons the cosmos into existence out of nothing.

Because the encounter of these deep silences is redemptive, then yes, silence is a central part of the redemption to which a hermit witnesses. This is so just as entering the terrible inarticulateness and even muteness of apparently meaningless suffering or the silence of senseless death while encountering the terrible silence of God is part of the redemption achieved in the Christ Event. In that event what could have been the most damning indictment of God's silence becomes instead the most profound witness to the scope and power of Divine Love's embrace.

As I have noted here before, our culture knows little of dwelling in silence. It fears it, considers it fruitless and perhaps significant of failure; knowing it is both associated with suffering and can unmask and occasion suffering, we generally fill it with sound of every kind. We deflect it and distract from it and when noise becomes too great we layer more noise on top of it rather than embracing  greater silence. We all know the truism that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God --- or to meet ourselves in the silences of our own hearts, much less to plumb these to their depths. We also know, I think, that as a result shallowness and superficiality mark our lives and relationships.

In our relationship with God we may fill our side of things with prayers and should we somehow meet the silence of God during a prayer period, we are apt to claim instead that God was absent or uncaring or simply failed to hear us. But hermits witness to the need for silence and solitude in becoming truly human --- in becoming the prayer God has made us to be. Beyond the need for external silence and physical solitude they witness to the silence of solitude that results when we allow ourselves to struggle with(in) and fall through these lesser silences deep into the hands of the Silent, Living God whose Word we are meant to enflesh and whose counterparts we are made and called to become.