silence

Breathing in the Silence

by Becky Eldredge

I found myself this morning reflecting on an experience that occurred last year during a Charis retreat. It was a Friday night last March, and I stepped outside the chapel into the cool air during a period of sacred silence. As the doors of the chapel closed behind me, I caught a glimpse again of [...]

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Scorsese’s Next Film?

by Tim Muldoon

There have been rumblings about director Martin Scorsese making a film of Shusaku Endo’s magnificent historical novel Silence, about Japanese martyrs of the 17th century.  Now it seems that the rumor may become a reality, according to Spero Forum. In a preface to Endo’s book, Scorsese writes perceptively about faith: How do you tell the [...]

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Speak Up or Keep Silent?

by Jim Manney

Words are exchanged. Tension’s in the air.  Do you bite your tongue or plunge ahead?  Carefully discern what will help other people, says Ignatius.  Sometimes we should act contrary to what we feel: speak when we want to be silent and silent when we want to speak. We act thus because in this matter we [...]

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Spiritual Practices: Napping

by Meredith Gould

I’m all for finding God in the silence. For me this means taking lots of naps, especially during the winter with its protracted darkness and chill. Never mind that I also nap during the summer to escape sunlight that has become entirely too fierce. Truth to tell, I often feel called to nap throughout the [...]

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Silence

by Tim Muldoon

The most basic spiritual practice is learning silence.  Practicing silence is an act of faith precisely because one cannot know for certain that anything is to be gained from it.  It might be a waste of that most precious commodity: time. What the Christian spiritual tradition teaches us, though, is that the practice of silence [...]

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Getting Unplugged

by Maureen McCann Waldron

I was struck by the post here last week “Solitude in a World of iPad Apps” about an article by Fr. Jim Martin, SJ.  On the day it was posted here, I was ending an 8 day silent retreat at the Jesuit Retreat House in Colorado.  When I first arrived on retreat, I followed my [...]

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Solitude in a World of iPad Apps

by Jim Manney

I assume that everyone reading this is immersed in the “always on” world of the web, blogs, iPods, email, smart phones, iPads, and other devices. Pay heed to Fr. Jim Martin’s plea to disconnect every once in a while: Sometimes it seems as if we can no longer stand to be alone or be “out [...]

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Shared Silence

by Tim Muldoon

I am on retreat with some forty Boston College students.  For five days, we are keeping silence together and attending to the mystery of God. During a meeting with other guides, an older Jesuit remarked that those who shared the long retreat–thirty days in silence–emerge as lifelong friends, even without having spoken to each other. [...]

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