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by Elaine M. Howard
 

Most five-year-olds would feel fear and guilt. And fear and guilt are the feelings most people have when they hear the phrase "spiritual disciplines." We think of God as a taskmaster who wants to discipline us into submission. Prayer. Scripture reading. Sabbath. We know what we should do. Lack of motivation and time, however, keep us from following the protocol. Spiritual disciplines begin to seem like rules, unnecessary and irrelevant rules, that can not possibly be worked into the fabric of our busy lives.

It’s difficult to think of spiritual disciplines as being absolutely crucial to our already overpacked lives. The outward acts of Christian living can easily take precedence over the inward acts of Christian contemplation. If I miss a leadership team meeting everyone will know. If I don’t show up to volunteer at the soup kitchen, everyone will judge me. If, however, I miss observing the Sabbath a few weeks in a row, no one will know and I may even be rewarded for the extra work I accomplished with the additional time.

Yet it is a dubious distinction to lord the outward acts of service over the inward acts of contemplation. Our inner spiritual health eventually flows into our outward actions. For example, a frantic life pace could be alleviated if we had a better sense of how to prioritize. Silence before God will do more to help us with priorities than even the most complex organizational systems. Often we are surprised by the suddenness with which anger comes upon us. Sexual sin just seems to "happen." In reality, these sins are not sudden, but are usually the culmination of a long-term inner disconnection with God. The spiritual disciplines are aids to the root of the Christian life, our intimate connection with the living God. They help move us out of the framework of actions, meetings, and leadership responsibilities which try to define who we are and into the framework of truth, where our relationship with God is the reality of our existence.

Student leaders, in particular, have a tendency to become ensnared in the tasks of a position, finding their status and identity from the success or failure of their duties. The spiritual disciplines help move leaders away from this snare. They allow each of us to define ourselves by who God says we are and his words to us: "You are my chosen child." We would do well to listen to the words of Richard Foster, who writes in his book, Celebration of Discipline, "Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant gratification is [primarily a] spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deeper people." The spiritual disciplines call us to stand in the face of the cultural norm and dare to be different. I’ve found four spiritual disciplines to be crucial for every student leader: silence, sabbath, study, and service. The remainder of this article focuses on the discipline of silence.

The struggle for solitude
The discipline of silence is foundational to the other disciplines because it most recognizes the nature of God. Through the ages, from Adam, to Moses, to Paul, to you and me, Scripture speaks of a God who reaches out to us. We can do nothing to force God into a relationship with us. He takes the initiative. The discipline of silence acknowledges that we need to wait for God to speak. But the world is a noisy place, and all too often we choose not to listen to his voice.

Are you convinced that you need solitude (focused silence before God) in your life? You might be asking, "Is this really possible in the midst of my tremendously demanding schedule?" This anxiety of busyness sometimes makes me feel as if I am in New York City trapped in Port Authority, the main bus station there. I barely manage to get off the bus, jostled by people pushing to get out to the main terminal. I step out of the crowded bus into the busy terminal where I meet busy people. I follow the stream of stressed-out, overworked people down the escalator where I am met with a cacophony of announcements, music, homeless people asking for money, police trying to keep order, and shopkeepers peddling goods. Once I find my way outside the terminal, I am met with a visual barrage: billboards advertising tobacco or filled with images of half-naked men and women, beneath which are individuals yelling at me to be involved with the pro-life movement, the environmental movement, or simply to move out of the way.

While few of us travel through Port Authority on a daily basis, our lives can resemble such a raging stream of noise, leaving us to wonder, "Is there any escape?" To live a life where silence is cultivated can seem difficult at best and impossible at worse. It feels attractive, but it also feels risky. We wonder if, as we stop, turn away from our activities, and listen, we will get lost or trampled for not keeping up with the crowd.

Yet there is greater danger in not stopping. We forget who we are. We start to view ourselves as mere automatons, significant only for what we can accomplish. We forget who other people are. We begin to view others only in terms of what they can do for us or what they demand from us. Most dangerously, we forget who God is. We start to view God as a noisy taskmaster. We confuse the voices of others yelling at us to do more with God’s gentle voice calling us to be quiet and wait.

The struggle for times of solitude may be exacerbated by our cultural context, but it is not unique to it. We can learn from the life of Jesus, who was not ignorant of our struggles. Mark writes of the life of Christ: "That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. . . . Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went looking for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: ‘Everyone is looking for you!’" (Mark 1:32-37)

Jesus knew well the tremendous pressures a busy chapter leader faces. He knew the anxiety that results from coming home at eleven o’clock at night to find sixteen messages on the answering machine. Jesus also knew that his only power came from God. In the midst of competing voices and clamoring needs, Jesus made it a priority to be alone with God. But if we know the necessity of solitude, why is it that we still don’t spend time alone with the Father?

The real excuse?
Our favorite excuse is our lack of time. There are too many appointments and commitments for us to take the time to be alone. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we might find that the real issue is not our busyness but rather our loneliness. A full schedule is much easier to face!

As a freshman in college, I had to face my loneliness. This is one entry from my journal: "I still feel deeply sad and it doesn’t seem to go away. . . . I am nervous and scared a lot of the time. I don’t know exactly why. I do know that I’m afraid to have time on my hands. I want to schedule every moment of the day so I won’t have any time to think. But then another part of me wants to go someplace and have a lot of time, as much as I need, to sort things out. I am scared because maybe God wants to deal with my fears and my insecurities and I don’t feel very strong. I feel very, very lonely." Many of us can identify with my predicament. When will we face it?

Henri Nouwen wrote in his book, Reaching Out, "When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch . . . and when we are left all alone by ourselves, we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness, and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game which makes us believe that everything is fine after all." We are a culture desperately afraid of--yet desperately in need of--solitude.

The first step towards true solitude is confronting loneliness. We need to be willing to confront loneliness in order to get near to God. Try praying this prayer: "God, I am lonely and I don’t know what to do with it. God, enter into my loneliness." When you confront loneliness and allow God to enter into it, then you will begin to move from loneliness to true solitude.

A second step toward silence is resisting the noise you have control over. Are you one who walks into a room and immediately turns on the television? Are you always on the phone talking to someone? Is the radio or CD player a constant background din? Break the habit of a noisy atmosphere. Take the small opportunities of natural space in your life to start experiencing solitude. A feasible challenge is to spend at least fifteen minutes a day in silence before God. The discipline is as simple as just being quiet. Start with a simple prayer of: "God, I give this time to you. Let me focus on you." It might be helpful to write down any distractions that come to your mind as a way of pinning them to paper and leaving them behind.

Denying noise may seem impossible in contemporary university culture. It may seem like you’re denying a piece of yourself. But solitude and silence will help us find that real life is not to be found in busyness. In a world which never sleeps and where noise is never ceasing, solitude allows us to turn around and face the noise, to walk through it and into the peace and quiet found in the arms of God. Through solitude and silence we will begin the journey to being less controlled by the whims and needs of the moment and more able to listen to the still, small voice of God.