Its quiet day again at Trinity Today, so here - by popular demand - is a rerun of my views on quiet spirituality from last year:
I have a confession - I hate quiet days. Now before you reach for the gravel to stone me, let
me explain.
I am quite a frenetic person (as anyone who has sat near me during a lecture can testify), I
like to be busy, I like to have several things on the go at once and I like noise.
To me it is totally bizarre that fourteen centuries since the idea was first conceived, western
Christianity cannot get beyond a monastic ideology of spending time with God, when, for
many of us it just simply does not work.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I like to spend time with God, to listen for the ‘still small
voice’ and to be in His presence. But I find this virtually impossible to do through quiet days
and long quiet times. Put simply, quiet days just don’t cut the mustard for me.
When I spend time with God I like to be active and spend time with God. I like to go for a
walk, climb a mountain (well alright a small hill), take my collection of kites out for a spin. I
like to shout, to (believe it or not) sing and to talk out loud to God.
As a result of all this I have spent much of my Christian life feeling like a failure when I
haven’t met God in quiet times, or have failed to successfully sit through a quiet day without
almost exploding. It is only in the past two or three years that I have realised it is OK to
meet Him in other ways, and that not to conform to the western ideal of monastic spirituality,
is acceptable.
Now I recognise that for many of you being quiet is exactly the way you need to spend time
with God. So I have a suggestion: instead of ‘Quiet Days’ let’s have ‘God Days’ a time set
aside for us all to spend time with our Lord in a way suitable to the unique personality he
created in each and everyone of us. And for those of us who want to jump, scream shout,
play music and generally meet our Lord through noise, lets sound-proof LR1 and the rest of
you can shut us in there for the duration!
me explain.
I am quite a frenetic person (as anyone who has sat near me during a lecture can testify), I
like to be busy, I like to have several things on the go at once and I like noise.
To me it is totally bizarre that fourteen centuries since the idea was first conceived, western
Christianity cannot get beyond a monastic ideology of spending time with God, when, for
many of us it just simply does not work.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I like to spend time with God, to listen for the ‘still small
voice’ and to be in His presence. But I find this virtually impossible to do through quiet days
and long quiet times. Put simply, quiet days just don’t cut the mustard for me.
When I spend time with God I like to be active and spend time with God. I like to go for a
walk, climb a mountain (well alright a small hill), take my collection of kites out for a spin. I
like to shout, to (believe it or not) sing and to talk out loud to God.
As a result of all this I have spent much of my Christian life feeling like a failure when I
haven’t met God in quiet times, or have failed to successfully sit through a quiet day without
almost exploding. It is only in the past two or three years that I have realised it is OK to
meet Him in other ways, and that not to conform to the western ideal of monastic spirituality,
is acceptable.
Now I recognise that for many of you being quiet is exactly the way you need to spend time
with God. So I have a suggestion: instead of ‘Quiet Days’ let’s have ‘God Days’ a time set
aside for us all to spend time with our Lord in a way suitable to the unique personality he
created in each and everyone of us. And for those of us who want to jump, scream shout,
play music and generally meet our Lord through noise, lets sound-proof LR1 and the rest of
you can shut us in there for the duration!
(c)Ali Mepham Nov. 2005
