As a practitioner of Zen, silence is an integral intimacy of the path. I am sure some of you find this whole ‘zen’ thing a little foreign and unrelatable to your own belief systems.

Be reassured….it is interesting that most if not all the contemplative and/or mystic traditions also underscore the slow deep pull of silence.

Here is part of a beautiful essay by Paul Kingsnorth, a self-described writer, Christian, and reactionary radical.
Much of what he prescribes would sit just as comfortably in a zendo as in a nave.

Silence – or at least, quiet; peace – is the natural environment of the Spirit of God, it seems, and we live in the world which appears purposefully designed to make this a great struggle. The roar of traffic, the planes crossing the skies, the hum of the electric wires, the black rectangles in our pockets which fragment our attention, stimulate our passions and take us anywhere but the place where we stand. Whatever the world is it makes silence, or even quiet, almost an impossibility. That means we cannot hear God. And when we cannot hear God, we are lost.
[…]
It took me a long time as a Christian to even begin to understand that much of the work, at least for beginners, is simply in shutting up. There is no point in worrying about whether you are silent or childlike or holy enough, or in trying to make yourself some kind of holy ascetic through force of will. Force of will doesn’t get you that far. You can run off to the forest or the desert if you like: some people are called to that life and some people are not. But we are all called to make a desert of our hearts. The Holy Spirit will alight there, we are told, when it finds a peace to welcome it.

However, we do it, so much of the work, I think now, is struggling to allow silence a place to grow. When we do that, much of our overcomplicated, worldly nonsense just falls away, even if only for a second. The cement cracks, our stories shatter, and we begin to see how to walk away from ourselves. In the silence, perhaps we discover how to be children again.

Paul Kingsnorth.

Read the full essay: In the Desert of the Heart