Earlier this week I had the privilege of co-leading a retreat focused on prayer and yoga. We held this event at our church’s retreat center on Lake Sylvia west of Minneapolis. Several months ago as we began publicizing the retreat I became excited by the diversity of people who began signing up. Those who signed on for what was a fairly openly described experience represented a variety of ages and church experience. Several made a point of telling me that they had never done something like this before. I marveled at their courage to simply arrive and see what would happen.

One part of the retreat was to spend some time in silence. It was not a long time as retreats go but it was more silence than most people engage in every day. After our morning worship we invited people to leave the chapel in silence, spend the next two hours without an input of words except those they may overhear spoken by those who were in the same space but on a different retreat. Folks could walk, swim, boat, pray, journal, or sleep. It was their choice. At the end of the two hours we would meet up again over lunch which would be eaten in silence. At 1:00 p.m. we would gather and break the silence and talk about what we experienced. In order to not appear rude to those who were co-existing with us but still talking, many of us wrote on our name tags: ‘I am spending the morning in silence.’ We all then headed into our morning, lips sealed.

I have to admit that the most difficult part of this exercise was lunch. Sitting at a table with others, eating but not talking, made for a challenging time. And yet when I gave myself over to it, I began to notice things I might not have had I been in conversation. First of all, I noticed the taste and texture of my food. I actually spent time paying attention to it! I also noticed the colors of the different individual foods that made up the art on my plate. It seemed to me the red of the tomatoes and the purple of the onions, the green of the lettuce and the yellow of the lemonade in my glass all seemed more refined, more intense. When I wasn’t distracted from the way the food looked by the conversation I was having, the food itself took center stage.

Another thing I noticed was the ability to hear snippets of conversation from the tables of talkers who were also eating lunch. Laughs and giggled sounded louder, the clinking of silverware on plates made musical sounds. One little boy declared loudly, “I am so happy!” It filled me with joy. I noticed that the pitch of the sound made by the ice tea dispenser was one half-tone off from the lemonade one which rested next to it. They made a lovely little tune when pushed quickly between the two. It made me laugh.

At 1:00 we gathered in a circle to talk about our experience of silence. It was interesting to hear the many ways people had spent the time, how they had ceased to create words. One person did say they even began to talk to themselves inside their head! We are such social creatures. A common noticing was how long the minutes seemed to unfold so leisurely, so slowly. For some this was a joy, for others more of an anxiety. Nearly everyone found something good within the experience. Most also found eating in silence the most challenging. It seems we are hard-wired to want to socialize over food. Not a bad thing at all.

This experience caused me to wonder about the hermits of old and those today who spend the majority of their waking hours in silence. I am sure I romanticize this life choice, the idea of spending your days seeing the colors in their brilliance, hearing sounds that get drowned out by the execution of words. I am sure the loneliness must be deep which is why it takes a certain person to give their life to this way of walking and being in the world.

But I am thankful for the glimpse at this spiritual discipline that has sustained itself for hundreds of years. When we are quiet long enough we begin to hear the deeper hum of the Universe which invariably connects us, I believe, with the Creator of the vastness of which we are all a part. Those moments when we can stop the words and the constant input of sound allows the gift of our own heartbeat to be the rhythm to which we move. Those times of silence and stillness when we walk silently through the ever unfolding minutes of each hour can provide the opportunity to feel and hear the rise and fall of our own expanding lungs.

These experiences, breath and heartbeat, give rise to praise of the purest sense. And for that I am grateful.