In a column from Lancaster Online, Elizabeth Eisenstadt-Evans offers a reflection about the diminishing amount of silence in our world and the implications for our spiritual lives. She begins with three questions:
As silence threatens to become as extinct as the passenger pigeon, what is its absence doing to our spiritual lives?
Is wordless reverence relegated to the sidelines of a world in which many of us are wired 24/7 to devices that, every day, seem to become smarter and smarter than we are?
What has happened to the prayerful moments that allow us to be fully present to wonder and to grace?
For the full reflection, please visit Lancaster Online here.
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In her article, the author writes: “…all three of the Abrahamic traditions value prayerful silence.” That is true—but it is also UNKNOWN.
I am 81 years old, an Episcopalian from birth, and I have never heard a single parish sermon dedicated to promoting silence and the contemplative way. That homiletical silence is the enemy of sacred silence—if it is not taught, it will never be sought.
And it is exactly what the “spiritual, but not religious” people need, want, and long to hear.