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Why We Avoid the Quiet
Published Date: June 3, 2015
Laura Baber Beach spends her days listening to the stories of people who are seeking God in the midst of lives of service. As the founder of Equipping Lydia and as an ordained deacon in The United Methodist Church, she guides guests to the deep well of God’s love. She is an experienced spiritual director and facilitates what is called “the gentle way” of spiritual renewal.
Laura recently wrote Rhythms of Restoration: Practicing Grief on the Path of Grace. It is a field guide of mini-retreats for the hurting and those who help them, published by Seedbed.
We all know it. Life has gotten fast and full. It has become a mantle of pride to be busy. We pack every waking moment with things to do. There is always some kind of technology to attend to. So often, our value is quantified by how much we have to do and how much we are needed. We use busy-ness as a protective shield for our vulnerable souls.
While many of us say that we long for quiet, in reality we often avoid it as if it were the plague. We choose the tyranny of the urgent to command our days. But, as we choose everything other than the quiet, grief begins to feel like an immobile block weighing heavy on the heart. It can send out red flags of resentment, irritation, frustration, sadness, despair, loneliness, exhaustion, or anger if not dealt with. These emotions trickle (okay, sometimes pour) out of us until we stop and attend to them. That is when we become brave enough to move past our immobilizing fear.
Yes, it takes great courage to face the losses of our lives. They become sacred. To let them go requires a deep level of trust. When we get quiet, then there we are, alone with God and our very vulnerable selves. In the quiet, we abide with God. God is gentle but in control. God doesn’t try to compete with all the furor of modern life. God, the very source of love, has all the time in the world to wait as we scurry about avoiding quiet and rest. Love simply waits for us to put our protective masks down and quiet ourselves. And so, the agitation and anxiety are often high before we begin to settle into the quiet. That’s normal.
Sometimes the people we love the most are the source of our pain. We have spent much energy building walls of protection; facades that mask the reality of these tender parts of ourselves, our families, or our communities. Or, sometimes we project the grief onto an archenemy. We blame one person or group as the source of all our pain; erroneously, we don’t up to our contribution to our situation or that of others.
Honest grief requires thought and reflection to help us move beyond denial. Simply to rest seems contrary to all that we have been taught. Yet something in our deepest, truest selves longs for this place of love and peace. We ache to know what it means to find our value in God’s love rather than in how well we perform. When we regularly incorporate stillness, and quiet, and calm into our lives, the accumulation of anxiety tends not to be as high.
How can it be possible to integrate quiet into the midst of our loud lives today? For those with pressing responsibilities, it is a shift in thinking and living, but it is possible. Little by little, with grace and tender care, the Spirit of love invites and teaches us to seek healing renewal rhythmically in the moments, days, and seasons of our lives. Weaving quiet into our lives allows us to listen and be heard. This is intimacy, the place where our grief can begin to heal.
We must get the pain out and give it to the One who can bear the weight of it all. We must go with Christ to Gethsemane, pouring out our hearts to God with Christ. This begins the courageous journey of grieving as a spiritual rhythm. As a rhythm, grieving can become a steady and natural experience of cleansing. The more it is practiced, the more it can be trusted as a means of God’s grace in our lives.
You can order your copies of Rhythms of Restoration directly from Seedbed. Discounts are available if ordering multiple copies.