Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

silence

The Spiritual Discipline of Driving with the Radio Off {and how it might just change the world}

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Yesterday, as I backed out the driveway on my way to attend an evening event, I clicked on the radio to catch the last bit of news for the day. I’m not a big music person, but when I’m driving I’ll often listen to the news or a talk show on NPR, much to my teenagers’ chagrin, and during my hour-long commute to and from Omaha once a week for my part-time job, I typically have a podcast playing in one earbud.

Yesterday, though, a few seconds after I’d turned the radio on, I clicked it off again and instead rolled down my window and drove the rest of the way to my destination in silence.

A brief shower had swept through the south part of town. As I drove I breathed in the scent of rain steaming off the hot pavement. I let the wind have its way with my hair and felt the humid breeze on my face. As I idled at a traffic light, I heard the steady whine of crickets in the field and the piercing call of a red-tailed hawk from its perch atop a telephone pole.

I realized it had been a long time since I’d driven with the radio off and the earbuds out of my ears.

It was only a 20-minute drive from my house to where I was headed, but when I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed my whole demeanor had changed. My mind was free of clanging thoughts. My pulse was slow and steady, my breathing even, my hands relaxed on the steering wheel.

Later that night, when I mentioned in an Instagram post how much I had enjoyed my silent drive, a friend commented that a year or so ago she’d made a conscious decision to drive with the radio off. “It’s amazing how much more margin I have in my life now,” she said.

Initially I was puzzled by her comment. After all, 15 or 20 minutes of silence is but a drop in the bucket of a typical busy day. How could so little quiet create “more margin” in her life overall, I wondered?

As I thought about my own quiet drive just a few hours before, though, I recalled how I’d slid out of the driver’s seat and ambled unhurriedly across the parking lot, noticing, as I walked, the clouds billowing on the horizon.

I remembered how I’d paused for a few seconds to listen to a meadowlark trill from the prairie grass nearby.

I considered the fact that I’d been noticeably less distracted in my interactions that night, more present to the people with whom I’d engaged.

Our lives are filled with a lot of noise. The clatter of the television, radio and social media. The barrage of advertising. The beeps, dings and ringtones from our smart phones, alerting us to a text, a Facebook comment, a tweet. The back-to-back-to-back meetings at work, the conference calls, the webinars.

So accustomed are we to its constancy, we don’t realize how much this relentless noise and distraction taxes our bodies, minds and souls.

We also don’t notice how much space this constant noise occupies, how it is infused into every facet of our days, how it even impacts how we move and who we are in this world.

Spending even a few minutes in silence has an immediate and discernable impact on our own physical and mental health, to be sure. But as our less distracted, more present selves step back into the world at large, it’s clear the few minutes of silence we take for ourselves also have a ripple effect, reverberating from ourselves into our environment and out toward those around us…perhaps reverberating from them still further, on and on, in wider and wider circles.

It seems, then, that perhaps the few minutes of silence we take for ourselves aren’t just for ourselves after all. As our calmer, more present, more attentive selves step back into our families, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our communities, those few minutes of silence are making way for a kinder, more compassionate, more spacious world.

…So tell me: do you ever drive with the radio off? What’s your favorite way to enjoy a few minutes of silence? 

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When You Are Called to No Words

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I’ve been thinking about words lately, mostly because it seems I have fewer these days. Back when I first began blogging eight years ago, I posted every day, seven days a week. Over time that frequency diminished to five days a week, then three days, until, most recently, I settled on once a week. Some weeks, even one post feels like a stretch.

I’m not sure why I seem to have less and less to say. Maybe after eight years of blogging, 1,547 posts, 86 columns for the Journal Star, three books, and dozens of articles, I’ve simply burned out.

Or maybe I’ve said all I have to say.

Or maybe, in a world that feels noisier every day, I’ve become more discerning about what and how much I add to the cacophony of voices and opinions.

I’ve been reading Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart. It’s a small book, but it’s packed with powerful insights. Nouwen has (ironically) a lot to say about the value of silence:

“Let us at least raise the question of whether our lavish ways of sharing are not more compulsive than virtuous; that instead of creating community they tend to flatten out our life together.”

Nouwen wrote those words long before the advent of blogging and social media, but I can’t help but read them through the lens of the present day and from my own experience as an author.

When I posted that quote on Instagram (again, the irony), a reader commented that she didn’t understand the last bit, the part about how shared words can flatten out our life together.

I’m not sure I totally understand what he means either, but I know from my own experience, I often come away from social media feeling flattened — numb, distant, distracted, fragmented — whether I’ve shared myself or read what others have shared. To me, there is a false intimacy and a one-dimensionality there, even as we strive for authenticity, depth, and connection.

Nouwen also writes about the importance of faithfully caring for the inward fire.

“It is not so strange that many ministers have become burnt-out cases, people who say many words and share many experiences, but in whom the fire of God’s Spirit has died and from whom not much more comes forth than their own boring, petty ideas and feelings.

Our first and foremost task is faithfully to care for the inward fire so that when it is really needed it can offer the warmth and light to lost travelers.” 

On one hand, caring for the inward fire as my first and foremost task feels selfish to me. As a “Christian writer,” I feel compelled to use my gifts to share the gospel — to offer, to the best of my ability, a little light by which to see along the journey. Caring for my own inward fire — especially caring for it first and foremost — doesn’t feel self-sacrificial enough.

Yet here’s the clincher: that inward light is what feeds my words. If I allow my own inner light to be diminished or extinguished, my words will become a mere clanging cymbal — noisy and persistent, but empty of truth.

The inward light also feeds me. Without it, I am an empty shell without a pearl; a body without a spirit.

“As ministers, our greatest temptation is toward too many words,” Nouwen writes. “They weaken our faith and make us lukewarm. But silence is a sacred discipline, a guard of the Holy Spirit.” 

I think, in all these years of writing about faith, I’ve come to fancy myself as a conduit of the Holy Spirit. But the truth is, the Holy Spirit doesn’t need me or my words. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.

I think I’ve mostly reversed the order here by trying to care for the inward fire of others before my own. And isn’t that, in some ways, irreverent or perhaps even blasphemous – to assume the soul-care of others is my job, rather than God’s?

I guess this is a long-winded way (again, the irony!) of saying I’ll be quiet in this space for a while – perhaps for the rest of the summer, perhaps longer. I’ve resisted this decision. For a variety of reasons I’ve tried to ignore the nudge. To stop blogging seems both unwise professionally and a little bit unfair to my readers, some of whom have been faithfully walking alongside me here the whole long way (bless you!).

Yet I also know it would be more unwise to keep pushing. I don’t want to become the person who says many words and shares many experiences, but in whom the fire of God’s spirit has died.

Thanks for your understanding and patience, friends. You are very dear to me, and I am more grateful to you than you will probably ever know.

Peace.

What a Japanese Garden Taught Me about My Spiritual Life {and my closet}

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JapaneseGarden3Ed

Lately I’ve been busy pruning. First I pruned my closet, keeping only the clothes I love and that fit (I finally parted ways with my favorite red pants because clearly “just three more pounds” is never going to happen).

Next I pruned my backyard, yanking errant coneflower, goldenrod and phlox from the flower beds and clipping dead branches and twigs from the river birch and magnolia trees. Eight leaf bags later, I now see open space and bits of sky and earth instead of a tangle of unruly branches and unkempt perennials.

I’ve altered my work space, too. I switched from the small antique letter desk I inherited from my grandmother to a larger table, removed all but three of my favorite knickknacks and wiped the surface clean.

A couple of weeks ago my family and I returned from a ten-day trip to the Pacific Northwest. We spent our last day of vacation at the Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon, where our guide explained the gardening technique referred to as “pruning open.” She pointed to the various maples, pine and dogwood surrounding us, all of which had been dramatically pruned to reveal an aesthetic presentation of limbs, branches and foliage.

“Pruning open” allows the visitor to see up, out and beyond to the sky and landscape, our guide informed us. It creates a sense of openness and lets in the light.

JapaneseGarden2Ed

JapaneseGardenEd

As we meandered along one of the garden’s wooded paths, my son Noah noticed that everyone in our tour group whispered as they walked. In fact, every guest we passed during the more than two hours we spent in the garden that morning spoke in hushed tones. Something about being in such an uncluttered, serene landscape naturally quieted us.

I’ve thought a lot about the concept of “pruning open” in the days following our visit to the Japanese garden, not only as it relates to my physical surroundings – my yard, closet and workspace – but also how the practice might impact both my mental health and my spiritual life.

Like most twenty-first-century Americans, my days are cluttered with demands, responsibilities, deadlines, errands and appointments. My personal calendar is full of social obligations, and even my supposed down time is comprised of a cacophonous mix of television, the Internet and social media. My smart phone is always in my purse or my back pocket, and the moment it dings, I pull it out and swipe its face.

What would it look like, I wondered, to “prune open” not only my physical surroundings, but my personal time and my inner life, too?

In light of that question, I’m trying to carve out a bit of time each day, even as little as a half hour, in which I do nothing but sit quietly in the chaise lounge in the corner of my back patio. I leave my phone indoors, and I don’t read or write, text or talk. I simply sit with no goal, agenda or purpose. I do nothing, and in the process, unclutter my mind and spirit, at least for a short while.

We can’t “prune open” our entire lives; after all, we have jobs, families to tend to, demands to meet and duties to perform. But we can “prune open” a small space and a sliver of time each day in which to quiet ourselves – a clearing in the jumble and tangle of our busy lives that allows us to see up, out and beyond ourselves.

{This article ran June 27 in the Lincoln Journal Star}