Encountering Silence

After six months, Cassidy, Kevin and Carl reflect on the lessons and insight this podcast has provided.

Mirabai Starr muses on the profound relationship between silence, stillness and mystical love.

What is the relationship between silence, creativity, fear, doubt, death, and missing voices — especially in terms of art and literature?

To explore this provocative question, we turned to our mutual friend — and one of the most gifted and articulate writers of our time — Jessica Mesman Griffith.

It’s very difficult for me to be in any kind of silence.. I love being out in nature and not having the iPod. When I take my long walks every day, I don’t take my iPod, I don’t listen to music, I don’t have earbuds, but the sounds of nature are not the sounds of my own body. It’s the sounds of my own body I think that terrify me. — Jessica Mesman Griffith

Jessica Mesman Griffith is an award-winning essayist and memoirist who honestly and fearlessly explores the intersections between religion (especially Catholicism), art and creativity, mental health, and social justice.  She is the founder of the Sick Pilgrim blog (www.patheos.com/blogs/sickpilgrim), described as "a space for the spiritually sick, and their fellow travelers, to rest a while." Her books include Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship Shared in Letters (co-authored with Amy Andrews), A Book of Grace Filled Days: 2016, and Daily Inspiration for Women (co-authored with Ginny Kubitz Moyer, Vinita Hampton Wright, and Margaret Silf).

Jessica's authenticity is revealed from the first minutes of our conversation, when she discusses how silence seemed unsettling to her as a child. Musing on the relationship between silence and the fear of death, or the link between happiness and conviviality, and even the anxiety that comes from the noises of her own body, she muses on how she has discovered different "types" of silence (the silence of nature seems different from the silence in a suburban home).

Good writing is having an ear… Having an ear for how something sounds on the page, for the rhythm of language… The best writers have an ear for where something falls flat or doesn’t sound true. — Jessica Mesman Griffith

The conversation goes on to explore the questions of the relationship between silence and creativity, privilege, and the body. Invoking poetry, horror movies, music, narrative nonfiction, we look at silence from many angles, acknowledging that the human experience of silence is messy and multivalent — pretty much like the human experience in general.

Some of the resources and authors we mention in this episode:

Jessica Mesman Griffith & Amy Andrews, Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship Shared in Letters

Jessica Mesman Griffith, A Book of Grace Filled Days: 2016

Jessica Mesman Griffith et al., Daily Inspiration for Women

Thomas Merton, Love and Living

William Friedkin (dir.), The Exorcist

Wes Craven (dir.), The Serpent and the  Rainbow

Tobe Hooper (dir.), Poltergeist

Tillie Olsen, Silences

Barbara Holmes, Joy Unspeakable

Natalie Diaz, When My Brother Was an Aztec

Tyehimba Jess, Olio

Rosalie Morales Kearns, Kingdom of Women

Rosalie Morales Kearns, Virgins & Tricksters

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

Flannery O'Connor, Spiritual Writings

Walker Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land

Thomas Merton, Essential Writings

Vinny Flynn, Seven Secrets of the Eucharist

John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings

Vincent Katz (ed.), Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art

John Krasinski (dir.), A Quiet Place

Neil Young, Harvest Moon

Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Yoko Ono, Grapefruit

Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

I think we’re certain that it [silence] means death and then we’re terrified that that’s what de...

Author Jessica Mesman Griffith talks about silence, creativity, fear, doubt, death, and missing voices.

How is Silence related to the human body? To movement, exercise, and performance? To physical, as well as mental and spiritual, wellness?

Today we begin what we hope will be an ongoing conversation in the Encountering Silence world, exploring these and similar questions.

Kurt Johnson

We open this exploration thanks to Kurt Johnson joining in the conversation today. Kurt Johnson is a personal trainer and massage therapist who works with individuals, small groups and corporations, to help  people manage pain, lose weight, improve fitness, and simply live better through movement, training, and exercise. He co-owns the Core Fitness training studio in North Haven, CT, and has over twenty years of experience studying and practicing the art and science of physical movement — and helping others to achieve their goals and beyond for bodily wellness. On top  of it all, Kurt is an avid runner and also engages in endurance competitions.  He has entered and completed half-Iron Man and full Iron Man races.

What's going on is you're doing, doing, doing, doing, but we need to take a step back and "non-do," and focus more on the quietness of your body, paying attention to those little things that are going on in your body, and finding out why these things are happening. — Kurt Johnson

If "personal trainer" evokes in your mind a young drill sergeant, fresh out of the Marines, who barks orders at his clients in a gym blaring with loud music and glaring neon lights — well, Kurt Johnson is not that person! Rather, his focus is on integrating physical wellness with mental and spiritual nurture — and so needless to say, he has some interesting things to say about the importance of silence in regard to physical health, fitness, and wellness. Kurt sees his ultimate mission to help people to find complete freedom in their movement of mind, body, and spirit, so they can become who they truly are.

Oh, and by the way, Kurt is Kevin's brother. 

Kurt Johnson talks to us about silence, the human body, movement, exercise, wellness and performance.

If you could take a snapshot of your relationship with silence today, what would it look like? Perhaps you will have just come back from visiting a city where tragedy has brought about a new quality of silence. Perhaps you are just clinging to a daily sitting practice in the midst of a very busy life. Or silence is your companion in a time of personal or professional transformation.

In this episode, we muse on what our relationship with silence looks like nowadays. Reflecting on our busy lives and how we try to maintain an intentional relationship with silence in the midst of the busy-ness, we muse on the paradox of how silence calls us back from the "mindlessness" of a life that is dulled by too much time in front of a computer screen, or too much time sitting at a desk — but as we enter into silence, we are taken to a different kind of "mindlessness," a place of forgetting self-consciousness and letting go of ego-defined ways of thinking, seeing or being.

"If you go for a hike, which I do often to reduce stress and to recuperate and to be quiet and to enjoy the beauty, if I do that I start to notice there's another level of consciousness that's available to me, and that level of consciousness is tapped in through silence. ... One of the things I've noticed is that silence is that shift in attention away from where it's self-consciousness and all about my ego and my needs, to opening up to the wide world in front of me, and saying 'I'm a player in this, I'm part of the trees, I'm part of the wind, I'm involved in this eco-system,' and that I need to reconnect, that I'm not separate from the flow." — Kevin Johnson

We round out our conversation by reflecting on some of the books we are currently reading, including poetry and even a couple of "guilty pleasure" books. Cassidy finishes our conversation with a lovely poem from the great Spanish mystics St. John of the Cross.

Some of the resources and authors mentioned in this episode:

Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

St. Francis of Assisi, In His Own Words: The Essential Writings

Mary Oliver, Devotions

Leah Weiss, How We Work

Kenneth Leong, The Zen Teachings of Jesus

Amy-Jill Levine (ed.), The Jewish Annotated New Testament

Evelyn Underhill, An Anthology of the Love of God

George Monbiat, Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life

Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Amanda Lovelace, The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One

Jim Forest, The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton’s Advice to Peacemakers

Jim Forest, All is Grace:  A Biography of Dorothy Day

Jim Forest, At Play in the Lion’s Den: A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan

Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

Willis Barnstone (tr.), The Poems of St. John of the Cross

Cassidy referred to the book Carl is currently editing. It's called An Invitation to Celtic Wisdom which will be released in November.

Episode 21: Encountering Silence in Our Busy Lives

Hosted by: Cassidy Hall

With: Carl McColman, Kevin Johnson

Date Recorded: May 4, 2018

Busy-ness seems to be a problem must working adults struggle with. How can silence help us?

As a peace activist, biographer, and lover of silence, author Jim Forest's deep humility and sincere way of being reveal to us much about listening, truly seeing, and deeply caring for our fellow human beings.

"The day starts in silence... and silence normally — not always, but normally — opens the door to prayer, so prayer and silence are very connected; sometimes the prayer is silence." — Jim Forest

Jim Forest, speaking at the Voices of Peace conference.

Describing himself as "an undergraduate student at Dorothy Day university" — and noting that he doesn't think he will ever graduate! — Jim Forest tells the story of a truly remarkable life — the child of American communists growing up in the 1950s, he tried his hand in the U.S. Navy but soon dropped out from the service to immerse himself in the world of the Catholic Worker Movement and anti-war activism, that led him to (among other things) co-founding the Catholic Peace Fellowship after the "Spiritual Roots of Peacemaking" retreat convened by Thomas Merton in 1964.

"Like arrows, words point, but they are not the target." — Jim Forest

Cassidy Hall recorded this conversation while participating in the "Voices of Peace" conference in Toronto in April 2018. Their gentle and intimate conversation explores art, philosophy, politics, the Eucharist, and spirituality — and how silence dances through all these dimensions of life.

Cassidy Hall and Jim Forest

With stories about legendary figures like peace activist A. J. Muste, Henri Nouwen, Thich Nhat Hanh, and (of course) Thomas Merton, this conversation provides deep and rich insight into a man who not only knew some of the great peace activists of the twentieth century, but who was indeed one of their number.

"Without silence, we don't hear anything." — Jim Forest

Some of the resources and authors mentioned in this episode:

Jim Forest, The Ladder of the Beatitudes

Jim Forest, Praying with Icons

Jim Forest, Road to Emmaus

Jim Forest, Living with Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton

Jim Forest, All is Grace:  A Biography of Dorothy Day

Jim Forest, At Play in the Lion's Den: A Biography and Memoir of Daniel Berrigan

Thomas Merton, Essential Writings

Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes

Daniel Berrigan, Essential Writings

Thich Nhat Hanh, Essential Writings

Cassidy Hall and Patrick Shen, Notes on Silence

Patrick Shen (dir.), In Pursuit of Silence

Jim Forest, The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton's Advice to Peacemakers

A. J. Muste, Nonviolence in an Aggressive World

Thomas Merton, The Literary Essays (Includes "The Message to Poets")

Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out

Jim Forest, Saint George and the Dragon

Jim Forest, Saint Nicholas and the Nine Gold Coins

Jim Forest, Silent as a Stone: Mother Maria of Paris and the Trash Can Rescue

Visit Jim and Nancy Forest's website www.jimandnancyforest.com.

Episode 20: Silence and Peacemaking: A Conversation with Jim Forest

Hosted by: Cassidy Hall

Introduced by: Kevin Johnson

Guest: Jim Forest

Date Recorded: April 27, 2018

It's cold in Toronto, even in the spring!

Jim Forest's humility and sincerity reveal much about listening, truly seeing, and deeply caring for each other.