October 3, 2025

Noise and Silence, Isolation and Community

“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” ~ W.B. Yeats

I began this week on a Silent Retreat at St. Martin’s Abbey in Lacey, Washington, nestled on a quiet corner of the campus of St. Martin’s University. My first spiritual experience with silence was a Silent Day in Advent 1988 at the parish of my then spiritual director. It was led by a monk who had recently founded a contemplative order. That was the first time I became palpably aware that I find God in quiet. Not necessarily solitude, but silence. Since that day I have been more and more intentional about finding times of silence each day, and to this day I begin my day by praying my morning prayers followed by contemplative prayer in the often dark quiet of the morning. That has become my spiritual baseline; everything else is built upon that.

Meanwhile, the world has become increasing noisy, almost staticky. It is a distracting and irritating din that fills the news of the world. Add to that the delightful busy-ness of our church and all that is going on in the ministries of our congregation, together with the persistent under current of challenges in the personal lives of our community, silence has been a scarce commodity for me recently. So at the wise council of my spiritual director, I planned a 48-hour silent retreat.

There once was a time when it was common wisdom that time alone with your thoughts (and with your God) was a good, almost medicinal, practice. After all, jail “cells” were named after monastic cells, where monks and nuns live. It was thought if silence and contemplation help women and men become more holy, it should help common people who have done ill to at least become repentant. Not sure that strain of logic—or its practice—is as common today, however.

Still, it is my common practice, and it is in fact medicinal for me. And I took all of you along with me, as you will see. Though I first took you to visit Dick and Linda Mortensen who are in a Memory Care in a facility in Lacey. I brought you all to them in the form of our most recent church directory. There were some teary eyes when they saw pictures of you who are old friends. Memories, shadowy as they might have been, still returned. I hope they are able to view it often, to remember our time together that afternoon, as well as their time at our church over the years.

But I also brought a church directory to the monastery for me. Regularly throughout the day I would pray through the directory: prayers of thanksgiving for you, prayers of intercession for what you find yourselves living through in this season, and prayers of discernment, inviting God’s direction guiding me to be a better pastor to you, and to you all. 

Especially in this most abrupt and difficult season for our country and its churches of all kinds, it is easy—no matter what your politics—to see this time as a tipping point. And so it is easy to be overwhelmed by it all. For this reason, the verse that defined my retreat was this, “Finally, sisters and brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, meditate on these things.” (Philippians 4:8) I literally spent time counting my blessings. Among them were you my church family, my family, and in particular my granddaughter who turned one year old this week. There are challenges ahead for us all, and in particular for our church and its ministries. But I was able to reset and reboot, not because I got away from my ministry or the issues of the world, but because I brought them with me and focused on the good, the just, and the pure. This was only reinforced by the constant repetition of the psalms we prayed across the hours of prayer in the abbey, stating and restating, “God is faithful, keep faith and hope alive, and do good as a sign of your hope.”

May we all do this. And may I continue to quiet my mind and spirit that you might lead a more faithful and even a more “fiercer life.”

With confidence in Christ,

~ Pastor Todd