Sitting in Silence, Moving in Silence

I am about halfway through a program that will leave me certified to be a spiritual director.  I loved the original design of the program:  4 onground intensives (2 in June, 2 in January), with one book to read a month.  It seemed doable with my life.

Well, here it is, one year later, and how life has changed.  One onground intensive, June 2020, was cancelled, and the one this week will be held online.  We've been given all sorts of resources to explore in advance.  I thought those resources would be written resources, but most of them seem to be videos--with all sorts of ancillary readings, if one is so inclined.

I've just watched my way through a series of videos on silence; the irony is not lost on me.  While the ideas are not new to me, I'm happy to be reminded of them.  But as I was watching, I did wonder if there was an angle we might be missing.

We were told to experiment with silence first by finding a place and time when we could be silent.  For me, that's a stumbling point, and if it's a stumbling point for me, a woman with no children in the household and a supportive spouse and an office door that I can close at will--if I'm having trouble visualizing that, imagine how difficult others would find it.

I thought back to a piece of wisdom that I discovered about meditation.  I have tried meditation through the years, but I have similar issues with meditation.  I can't empty my mind.  I can't sit cross-legged.  My back wants to slump.  If I close my eyes I go to sleep, but if I leave them open, I'm distracted by all the dust.

In one of Julia Cameron's books, she mentioned that Western minds have trouble with the kind of meditation that mandates that we sit in a quiet space and empty our minds and think of nothing.  She recommends writing as a means of meditation.  It gives us something to do, which helps quiet some part of our brains.  And for many of us, writing gives us the space for some inner wisdom to bubble up, wisdom we might not be able to access any other way.

I wonder if the same might be true of silence.  If we write, might we be more successful?

But for me, writing is a kind of noise too.  It's a good kind of noise, but how can I be sure I'm hearing God?

Maybe instead of sitting in silence, we should exercise in silence.  For those of us who want to focus on a single image, we could do that, if we were working out on a machine.  For those of us who need to move through space, we could do that too, by walking or jogging or cycling.

I'm also thinking that knitting or crocheting or making a series of lines on the page could be useful.

This line of thinking has made me wonder how many other spiritual processes we might need to rethink.  How many traditional methods of practice might be opened up to many more people if we widen our approach?