God Speed and Silence
walking in the (not so) cool of the day
What happens when prayer stops working the way it’s “supposed” to? When silence feels more like absence than presence? For the past few weeks, I’ve been walking—not for exercise, not for productivity, but as a slow, embodied practice of contemplative listening. Here’s what I’ve been learning—not through visions or breakthroughs, but through heat, cracked sidewalks, birdsong, and the wonder of the incarnation.
Normally, I retreat into A/C and some combination of stillness, solitude, and silence - be it Centering Prayer, Lectio Divina, or even a simple eyes-closed-following-my-breath meditation. These practices have been faithful companions to me at different points over the past decade. I even committed at the start of the year to faithfully engaging in the work of more deeply mining for my True Self. I had Father Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward and Immortal Diamond at my side, and my daily “sits” scheduled in. But after a couple of months, the innerwork, which started with reading and theories, landed forcefully in my world, fully enfleshed as grief.
I realised that grief is like staring at one of those old wooden fences - paling, then a small gap, then another paling, then a gap, and so on. There’s an entire world beyond the fence, but when grief tightens your gaze, you don’t notice the spaces anymore. All you can see is wood. And in my quiet sits, all I could see was a fence.1
This kind of grief—this loss—needed something beyond the quiet of my quiet office or living room floor. I found myself drawn into a different kind of contemplative space: One that was in motion and embodied. So, for this season and my practice, I walked. I walked because, in my mental and emotional stuckness, I needed to move. I needed fresh air - even if it was Brisbane’s hot, sticky, end-of-summer air (here, in sunny Queensland, we only really get two seasons: hot, and a little less hot). And though the heat hung heavy around me, still I found space to breathe.
This grief practice looked like three weeks of contemplative walking through my neighbourhood streets. What emerged during these walks both surprised me and didn’t surprise me at all:
God is at work.
God’s native language is silence.
God’s default speed is slow (and not much that lasts happens quickly).
So, this post is not about breakthroughs, enlightenment, or mystical visions. But it is about becoming ever-so-slightly more attuned to a Christ who is enfleshed in the world around me. It’s about the Christ who moves slowly, speaks sparingly, but remains ever with me, even in my darkest moments.
God is at Work
Though not a newcomer to contemplative practice, this eyes-open walking meditation made me feel like a beginner again. And like most beginners, I came to it with ideals and expectations: some magic moment, a surge of insight and clarity. But I was struck by the simplicity of these walks. There were no big revelations - just walking. And heat. And sweat. Sweat and sorrow.
I would say something began to shift, ever so slightly. A softening. A deeper attentiveness than I’m accustomed to. The experience that God was already here on this street, working and moving, before I showed up.
This attentiveness became the gift of the walks - I wasn’t uncovering new ideas about God, but was encountering a fresh kind of seeing God. I decided early on that I didn’t want this practice to turn into a search for clarity or fixes, but rather a surrendering to mystery - and in particular, the mystery of the incarnation. Before this season of grief started, I could’ve explained or maybe even given a sermon on the incarnation - God’s pouring out of himself into history in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth.
I have also loved engaging the ideas put forth on the Cosmic Christ by more modern authors like Richard Rohr, Dallas Willard, Pierre Teilhard DeChardin, and Vincent Pizzuto and ancient Church Fathers alike, theologians like Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Maximus the Confessor. But during these past three weeks, I experienced the Cosmic Christ - alive and enfleshed in all creation.
So, it was obvious to me that God is at work, but rarely in the ways I want him to be. Again, not that this is new information. As a spiritual director, I often journey with others as they realise the activity of God in their lives. But this season, it was very hard to see what he was up to in mine. On these walks, a moment of peace would come and then go again.
I reflected a lot on joy - what it is, where it comes from, where it goes. I began to think about joy and how it seems to be connected to re-membering, a bringing back together of what feels far apart: God and self, self and neighbour, betrayal and reconciliation, woundedness and healing. I recalled a few weeks back a quote from Paula D'Arcy that said, “God comes to us disguised as our life.” This means, regardless of what happens - whether God has brought it or allowed it, God is in it somewhere and is at work in it to draw me (and whatever “it” is) back to himself.
God is the Great Reconciler of Time.
God’s First Language is Silence
This idea comes from both St John of the Cross and Trappist priest Thomas Keating. Keating actually said, “Silence is God’s first language, everything else is a poor translation.” The deeper into this practice I walked, the quieter it became. My first few days were loud with thoughts, unresolved grief, and long arguments with phantom opponents (all of which I totally won, by the way). I regularly use this Keating quote when writing or talking about the practice of silence, but I have never considered its shadow side. When you’re wanting to hear, needing to hear something from God, his native tongue feels less like a gift to explore and more like abandonment.
I know silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of Someone. But on these walks, these truths had to become embodied for me all over again. This silence didn’t come as an inner clearing or relief, at least not in the way I had thought of previously. It came more like an enveloping presence. A Presence that was everywhere I looked - a dead snake’s remains, tadpoles in a rain puddle, fresh shoots of grass, and the canopy of trees. Creation was praising its Creator in its native tongue, silence! This silence wasn’t abandonment from God, but was an incredible chorus. Maybe a chorus and choreography. Perichoresis2 - A dance of divine life that I was being invited into. A dance that has been going on even before the Word spoke the world into being.
This is the Christ who walked alongside me. A Christ who is at once both hidden and revealed - in the gaps and ambiguities of Scripture and of our lives. My prayer more and more is that I may become fluent in the language and nuances of silence, in all its subtle and terrifying beauty.
God’s default speed is slow (and not much that’s good happens quickly)
By the end of the practice, my pace had changed. Not necessarily by intention. But it seemed to happen naturally. I don’t have a way to track it, but I would bet my heart rate was even slower than normal. It felt like that. My eyes also were slower to move from object to object. And the longer I looked and contemplated an object - a single leaf or a barking dog, the less of an “object” it became. I looked to see Christ in it, and therefore, from what I am learning, I am looking to see myself in it as well. This kind of “seeing” could only happen at this pace. I assume, as with physical exercise, this practice, over years, would develop these eyes so that I would carry them everywhere. They certainly didn’t last long after my walks finished and I was back to my “regular scheduled programming”. But I long for them to become my normal.
When I am in this slowed pace, I find that I am slower to judge and categorise. I look for connections and unity, not at the loss of distinction, but because of it! Perhaps this is what St Paul has in mind when he uses the term polypoíkilos in Ephesians 3:10. He explains that the “open mystery” of the Gospel is that there is no “other” in creation, but in creation’s rich diversity we see the polypoíkilos (multi-colored, varied) wisdom of God, who made all things and is now making his church - his unified body - one with each other and one in Christ. And while it seems like a new concept to many modern Christians, as we are one in Christ, we are also one with creation itself, and he is drawing (or literally dragging) everything back to himself. (John 12:32) Interestingly, the Greek phrase found in John 12:32 does not say “all men” (KJB, ASV) or “all people” (NIV, ESV, NASB), but simply states, “will draw ALL to myself”.
Contemplating this oneness, this holding, this drawing brought me such a sense of peace and hope. Both Chris Green’s brilliant book, All Things Beautiful, and Vincent Pizzuto’s Contemplating Christ: The Gospels and the Interior Life provided such rich material for meditation during these past few weeks.
This wasn’t about taking in new information, but to contemplate Christ, his advent, beauty, faithfulness, passion, great sorrow, and resurrection - not just at some point in history, but moment by moment right here and now in my life and in the life of everything and everyone around me. These walks gave me the space and time to let Christ’s continual incarnation ruminate and saturate down into my being.
This time was very…I want to write “healing” here, but that doesn’t feel honest. I think maybe it began a long-term relationship with the healing of Christ. I am not healed. Not yet. But something has shifted, even if only gently.
These meditations are giving me a new framework through which I am beginning to see. I am getting glances of the world beyond the fence posts. It isn’t fully clear or fully available to me yet. But I’m being drawn into it. This is the kind of spiritual work that feels like nothing is happening and everything is happening because it’s happening so slowly, so microscopically (is that a word?). I once would have longed for a grand gesture - something I could share with others, preach about, teach to a class, form into a “thing”. Like something I could grasp hold of and have power over. But this feels more like allowing myself to fall back into the grasp of Someone instead. I am being held rather than holding. I am in surrender, not control.
I remember a teacher of meditation once telling our class, “When you begin to meditate, you may feel less anxiety, or find that you’re more alert. You may feel powerful and have great insights. Most likely, you will experience no change at all. Don’t count on anything dramatic. Not much that’s good happens quickly.”
God is slow… not because he is disengaged, but because creation takes time. Resurrection takes time. Probably because we resist dying. I know I do. This season has been a death. Death to titles, roles, achievements - all the things the false self clings to. But these walks have been an honouring of that death; a three-week funeral procession in my soul. Thanks to a handful of dear friends and my wonderful Suz (whom I don’t know how I could survive without), I have had the courage to stare death in the face - to go into the depths of this grave and in doing so have come face to face with my Creator.
These deaths are an end, but not the end. They are merely compost. They make way for resurrection, which brings us home to where we’ve been all along - our true self, hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:3) This is Christ in me. And it is slow work.
Three weeks in, and not much has changed. Actually, in my immediate circumstances, things have become much worse! But somehow, I am okay inside of this. Something within me has shifted. Not dramatically, but I’ve become a little more attuned and a little more open to seeking the Christ who is enfleshed in all things.
What this practice has taught me, or perhaps reminded me, is that God is at work, but I have little to do with that work, except to posture myself to remain fully fixed to the Vine that is Christ. (John 15) These walks helped me to do that. They helped me hear his words of silence. They helped me slow down and move in step with the rhythm of the Spirit at work in creation and in me.
I still don’t have much clarity about my extremely limited time and place in history. But that is okay as well. I am finding the One who holds and reconciles time. In one of my earliest reflections, I wrote that I wasn’t seeking to have a mystical experience to “ooh” and “ahh” over. And I didn’t. But what I found was far greater. In the midst of a really painful season, walking down the most mundane streets, I found Christ. Truly, he has moved into my neighbourhood. (John 1:14 MSG)
Though he was not speaking of grief, Vincent Pizzuto used this fence metaphor for how we read and analyse Scripture. However, it felt very true for me as well this season. See Vincent Pizzuto’s Contemplating Christ: The Gospels and the Interior Life (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2018).
Perichoresis is a Greek word used to describe the relationship of the three Persons of the Trinity to one another. They are distinct but not separate, existing in a dynamic, mutual exchange of love and being. God, through the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), invites humanity into a relational dance, a reciprocal exchange of love and being. This dance, or "perichoresis," models how we, as humans, can participate in a similar loving and interactive relationship with God and with each other. Essentially, God's internal life of perichoresis is extended to include us, offering us an invitation to share in His divine life.
This post made my heart sing. Beautiful, heart-wrenching, synchronous, familiar. Peace to you as we walk together on different sides of then world.
Thank you for writing this and sharing it.