There’s a kind of silent discomfort you may think I’ve forgotten. Most people feel vulnerable during silence—even during well-intended or accidental silences. Isn’t vulnerability a problem, a misuse of silence?

Think of the seven-minute lull in a conversation, where there’s a simultaneous blank moment for everyone, all conversations seem to end, and no one can think of anything to say. Or the awkward silence, when someone poses a question or statement that no one feels comfortable addressing. In situations like these, we can feel the desire to say something, anything to put the silence out of our misery. Especially if we’re haunted by our experience of silencing, the silent treatment, or deprivation, even two heartbeats of silence can feel like an eternity.

But I disagree. I’d like to propose that vulnerability is not a misuse of silence, like noise, silencing, betrayal, or deprivation. Vulnerability is just evidence that we aren’t ready to receive silence or to cooperate with it. Vulnerability, after all, is the discomfort we feel by being exposed to risk—and if we’re unpracticed in using silence for good, silence may be the very definition of risk for us. It may not be bodily harm we’re fearing, a sunken place, but it’s fear nonetheless that makes the lack of sound unbearable.

I remember, 20 years ago, leaving a movie theater late at night. A woman approached me and asked if I would walk her back to her car. She had just seen a scary movie, and even though she knew it was fiction, she didn’t feel safe in the silent night. I found the request bizarre, because I hadn’t seen the scary movie she did. The silence to me felt delicious. She felt vulnerable with the silence, and I didn’t. She brought fear into it, and I didn’t.

There are moments like this for all of us, when the proverbial crickets stop and we get antsy. That can happen with any kind of silence, in any setting, by ourselves or in company. The vulnerability is a sign that our muscle of using silence needs to be strengthened. And yes, using silence is like using a muscle. It needs to be exercised in order to have strength and be ready for use. Otherwise, it will fail us. Or, perhaps more appropriately, we will fail it.

I think the vulnerability of silence is captured wonderfully in an experimental French New Wave film called Band of Outsiders. Most of the time, when we experience “silence” in a film, we’re only experiencing the sound of no one talking. There’s still plenty of sound, in other words—background noise, traffic, utensils clinking against plates, and so on. There might even be musical score. But in this film, when three friends in a café decide to stay silent for one minute to test their patience, it’s actual silence they experience. Un, deux, trois, they count down, and, all background noise cuts off immediately, as well as their own chatter. For a moment or two they enjoy the fun of their experiment, but soon it becomes clear that the silence is uncomfortable for all three, too vulnerable. Their voluntary anechoic chamber is so restless that they can’t even make it through the whole sixty seconds.[1]

Often, our feelings of vulnerability in silence have a deeper layer. We’re disturbed by literal silence because we’re also more deeply disturbed by spiritual silence. Shusaku Endo wrote a novel about this. Appropriately, the novel is called Silence. The narrative follows the Jesuit priests who first brought Christianity into a religiously hostile Japan. The silence of God is one of the most unnerving and surprising realities to the priests, especially when they are caught, tortured, and unrescued—even after many prayers. The main character, Rodrigues, calls out to God several times, “Lord, why are you silent? Why are you always silent?” And there is no answer; at least, not for a long, unbearable while.[2]

It’s the same question people have asked for thousands of years. If there is a God, and if—as Francis Schaeffer has assured us—he is not silent, then why does it feel so often that he is?[3] When bad things really do happen to good people, in visceral, confounding ways, why does God not say anything? Or do anything? Seemingly. The silence can be deafening.

Silence: a call to (contemplative) action

And yet. Silence may not give us everything we want, when we want, but it is still a gift, just as sound is. Even though vulnerability is uncomfortable, a life without silence is unbearable. As you may know from your life of noise, it is only a pale substitute for life. As Richard Rohr writes, silence is essential to any true life:

Without silence we do not really experience our experiences. . . . Without it, we just react instead of respond. Without some degree of silence, we are never living, never tasting, as there is not much capacity to enjoy, appreciate or taste the moment as it purely is. The opposite of contemplation is not action; it is reaction. We must wait for pure action, which always proceeds from a contemplative silence in which we are able to listen anew to truth and to what is really happening.[4]

The stakes are high. Silence, good silence, lies beyond the barriers of noise and distraction. It’s been sullied by our experiences of bad and damaging silence. It’s even a struggle for us to enter into it without feeling overcome by vulnerability. And yet, we need it.

Our ability to use silence well requires intention and practice, as if we were using a muscle. For many of us, the muscle has atrophied. We need exercise (which can continue, by the way, with the Selah and Your Turn sections that follow each of the remaining chapters). Every one of us can get better at using silence, welcoming it when it arrives, collaborating with it so we can enjoy its benefits and what it has to share with us. We can feel less vulnerable, less at risk, and more ready—even eager for the silence to begin.

If you think I’m being grandiose, stay tuned.

[1] This scene from Band of Outsiders (Bande á Part, 1966) can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XAi7xYOwQ.

[2] Endo, Shusaku. Silence: a novel. Trans. William Johnston. New York: Taplinger, 1980. The novel has also been adapted into a film version by Martin Scorcese in 2016.

[3] Schaeffer, Francis. He is There and He is Not Silent. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1972.

[4] Richard Rohr’s thoughts on silence, contemplation and reaction come from “You Cannot Capture Silence, It Captures You,” published on an unknown date in 2015 at http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=1065.

Selah

Take a few minutes to consider the following questions:

When was the last time I kept good silence from happening because I felt vulnerable? What might have actually happened if I had let it continue?

Have might I grow in my bravery, so I can experience vulnerability and then push past it into the silence, and into whatever that silence has to offer?