10/7/15

At B- tonight, Fr. Michael had us listen to an episode of the Moth Radio Hour in which Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, tells his story about reclaiming his lost childhood. One of the things that made an impression on me, besides the skill of Ishmael's storytelling, was something Fr. Michael pointed out: that it was the silence and humility in his life that allowed him to escape the conditioning of his violent past and experience a new life. In spite of all the things he did and saw as a child soldier in a war-torn country, he didn't have the need to boast, to always be the best and have the last word. That silence and humility, wherever it came from, gave Ishmael the space and wisdom he needed to transform his life, his very self, in a positive and healing way. And those are the same qualities that attracted me to many of the great spiritual teachers throughout history. Thomas Merton, for example, writes:

The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Not all men are called to be hermits, but all men need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally. When that inner voice is not heard, when man cannot attain to the spiritual peace that comes from being perfectly at one with his own true self, his life is always miserable and exhausting. For he cannot go on happily for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul. If man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person. He no longer lives as a man. He becomes a kind of automaton, living without joy because he has lost his spontaneity. He is no longer moved from within, but only from outside himself. (The Silent Life, 166-7)

One day I hope to discover that same silence in my own life, although I hope I don't have to go through what Ishmael did to find it.