Making Our Home in Silence

The church—in theory—is here to help us make our home in the silence of adoration and the holy, to give us courage to carry it into ordinary life, into the kingdom of noise—that is, what ancient writers have called “the world”—so that it, too, may be transfigured. “The world” in this context does not mean the creation, which is good, but rather the arena of illusion, of power struggles and conspicuous consumption, imagined in the mind but acted out in the suffering of the material creation and the body. It is this shadowy and contentious world of avidity, not the body, which Paul refers to as “the flesh.” This phantasmagorical world cannot bear silence, for silence reveals it for the delusion it is. It adores only what it can consume and lives for the adrenaline rush of power over people and things. It is this noisy world of delusion and lies that the humble Christ defeats by self-emptying silence.

Maggie Ross, "Practical Adoration," from Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, Vol. XXIII, No. 3 (March/April 2008), (Nashville: The Upper Room, 2008), 13.

Photo by Wong Ling Hong