A Spirituality of Shutting Up

A radio interview I heard last week about spirituality seemed nothing more than an Evangelical Buddhist moment: Quoted statistics demonstrated nothing, anecdotes related nothing, and questions about insights resulted in no answers. I was left to work out my own sort of meaningful answer to the topic of the day.


And so here it is, unprofound and short though it well may be: To be spiritual is to listen. 


Reading counts, certainly, at least if it’s of thoughtful content, as may being quiet and looking at nature and watching people and doing many other things, too, like listening. 


Journaling may count, too, since putting thoughts into a notebook allows you to listen to yourself, but blogging for an audience really doesn’t, as it mandates outbursts of humor and irony that (as I learned in another less-than-satisfactory interview…sorry, it must’ve been a bad week at NPR) undermine sincerity and the very fabric of relationship in our society. It’s too noisy.


(Even N gets irony: As we drove down the road yesterday she bemoaned the fact that we hadn’t said goodbye to our dear dog. “You’re right,” I said, quietly adding, “Bye, Canela”–at which N gave her I-get-it “Ha-Ha.”)


There are many Biblical examples of silence and listening as spirituality: Jesus went off by himself quite a few times, apparently; Jonah had a (probably ranting- then listening-filled) run-in with the gastric elements of a godly super fish; and Jesus when questioned by Pilate wouldn’t say anything (even though Pilate did seem ready to listen, at the moment…I’m not sure which of the two guys was being more spiritual, just then).


And then, since it’s Advent, a time of expectation and hopefully listening for new spiritualesque adventions, there was Zechariah, surrounded by idiots who didn’t seem to realize that he was dumb, not deaf (“Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child.” That’s ironic, right?), after he disbelieved God’s right-hand bad-boy Gabriel’s letting him know that Zechariah’s dear wife of many years and he would conceive someone relevant to the world. He’d gotten a bit testy and hadn’t replied to the message with a simple “Yessir,” so good old Gabe saw fit to mandate a bit of shut-mouth for the big Z.


There are lots more examples, I’m sure. Like the time Loretta Lynn was working in her garden in Coal Miner’s Daughter and told her own daughter something like, “Hush, now, darling, Mommy’s working on a song,” which sort of happened to me except that I was rototilling and wearing ear plugs while working on a song, and I didn’t call myself “Mommy,” and no one was trying to interrupt me, and so really it wasn’t that difficult to listen to the artistic little voice inside me. 


And there’s always the listening-based spiritual discipline of reading Joel Stein in Time and vacillating between wrinkling my brow, blushing, and nodding enthusiastically. That last part happened to me once, at least, when he wrote rather funnily about our society’s too-much reliance on humor, which is, by the way, I think, the essence of what the anti-irony lady on NPR back in my fourth paragraph was saying.


(Speaking again of irony, Time had a great “don’t worry about the death of irony” factoid: Romney’s share of the popular vote was around 47%.)

Just in case you’re tired of listening to others’ rampages and causes and concerns–that might mean you’re not into spirituality, yet, although I’m sure you’ll grow into it eventually, if Gabriel has anything to say about it–maybe you can sign up with this guy. I’m going to show the flick to my students tomorrow, to remind them what irony is.

(I’d thought about showing them this whole post with its irony, for fun, but for public school it’s probably way too spiritual.)