Ever since my class, “The Practice of Silence,” I am convinced more and more of the power of silence, and also it’s difficulty.
Silence has a bad rap these days. My sense is that it is more than it has had in previous generations. But in either case, it is a hard sell.
For one, there’s the saying, “silence is violence.” Inaction in the face of great evil is indeed an act of violence, a “sin of omission” as we used to call it. The absence of a good action in the presence of an unjust one. When required to actively resist evil, we must do what we can to stop it and/or stand in solidarity with those suffering from that evil. But not all silence is inaction. Being a bystander in the face of racism and misogyny is violence, practicing a listening, active silence, has the power to sensitize us to the the pain and suffering around us so that we might act faithfully, justly. I know of many stories where individuals and congregations have taken great action out of their collective, listening silence.
I remember one meeting where a concern for hungry children in the neighborhood during the summer break was lifted up during the silent portion of a meeting for worship. The meeting was moved. Before people left the meetinghouse after worship that morning, there was a plan set in motion to respond. Within six weeks time, the meeting was working with the health department, local schools, and food bank to offer breakfast and lunch to any child in the neighborhood who wanted it Monday-Friday during the summer. This doesn’t happen all the time, but communities can build up a relationship to silence that enables them to be sensitive to the suffering of others in their community and prepared to act collectively as they are led.
Have there been times in Quaker history when Quakers have allowed their active silence to slip into the passive silence that empire seeks to lull is into? Yes, absolutely. No practice is immune from the corruption the power of the religion of empire. In the same way that Walter Wink argued that powers can fall, and powers can be redeemed, so to it is true with human practice. However, if silence is a target of corrupting power, even more reason, to me, to resist its being co-opted.
It must be a powerful practice indeed.
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