Driving, Prayer and Finding God in Silence
I do some of my best thinking on my drive to work. Thoughts spin out of my head as my car leaves the driveway. With the relentless energy of a river after heavy rains this interior monologue continues unabated until I recognize that I’ve been swept out to sea with dry land nowhere in sight. I am so wrapped up in this flow of thoughts that I’ve not even noticed the landscape I’ve been driving through, the beauty of pine trees laden with snow on a cold February morning. Instead I saw only the loud, rushing torrent of thoughts, and missed the true gift that silence and attention bring.
This scenario has played out in my life many times, a relentless pursuit of thoughts instead of attention to what’s happening right before my eyes, and missing intangibles such as beauty, visceral experience like joy or even sheer terror when it comes. No, I had been paying attention to the noise of my thoughts instead of the silence that sits between the end of one thought and the beginning of the next.
For a long time I didn’t even know that there’s more than this barrage of interior self-talk, thinking about things rather than experiencing the ebb and flow from within the silent places. Later, this reality broke over me, that life can be viewed from the empty spaces around which the vortex swirled. And when it did, it felt like a coming home to what it was like when I was a young child. It was at this point that Jesus’ exhortation that we must become like young children1 began to make sense to me.
So how do we rediscover that inner refugia of silence, what poet Robert Bly2 may have been speaking of when he dreamt of:
...strange and dark treasures Not of gold or strange stones but the true Gift, beneath the pale lakes of Minnesota. Robert Bly
One technique that has provided a key to unlock this gate for me is the cultivation of attention to the present moment. This has grounded me in an ecological and embodied spirituality, through which the torrent of my thoughts, my Tower of Babel so to speak, can begin to diminish in favor of the deep wellsprings, the low and moist places where I come face to face with matters of soul, where I begin to appreciate the weightiness of life and the silence of rugged and windswept places in my heart.
In fact, my Catholic tradition has a long history of prayer practices aimed at the cultivation of attention to the present moment but these have until recently been confined to monasteries and convents, largely by-passing the laity. Many people in the pews have never heard of contemplative prayer nor been instructed in how to cultivate silence and awareness of the presence of God in their lives. In many ways this is a product of modernity, the disenchantment of the world, a Cartesian wrong turning that sees the universe as an unconscious, purely material reality, a clockwork orange in which there is no breath, no magic, no awareness, and no life. This view has done great harm not only to spirituality, but also to the earth and its creatures. This view has contributed to the world being ravaged for its material resources, whose only value lies in the profit that can be obtained by extraction and desecration.
I was introduced to contemplative prayer in the writings of Thomas Merton when I was a young man, newly arrived at college. I stepped into the bookstore and saw a glossy paperback edition of the Seven Storey Mountain, Merton’s autobiography written while he was still a very young Trappist Monk. I picked it up and almost immediately I was drawn into his story. I didn’t understand exactly how monks prayed but I knew I wanted to learn more. Merton seemed very influenced by Saint John of the Cross, the 16th century Spanish Carmelite mystic and poet. I figured reading him would be a good place to start. I managed to find an old dusty copy of The Ascent of Mt. Carmel in the college library and although I did not understand what John meant when he likened the soul’s participation in God’s presence to a clean window pane, so clean and clear that you see only the brilliant light of the sun, while the window itself has become invisible3 , nevertheless I found it attractive and compelling.
Still when I tried to pray, I had no idea what to do. There was very little about technique in what I read. I was very immature in my prayer life at that time and had no flesh and blood teacher or spiritual director. So I foundered like a boat without a rudder, and no sail or centerboard, nothing to propel me forward. Anyone who has ever sat in a small boat, a mile or so off-shore with no wind and no motor, subject to the relentless roll of the hull as each wave passes underneath knows the feeling of getting more and more nauseous. By my third year in college I no longer saw myself pursuing a monastic or even secular vocation as a priest or religious.
My experience with contemplative prayer had all but fizzled. And that might’ve been the end of it except for my continued interest in poetry and theatre, which kept a small spark of enchantment alive in me during this period of my life. I remember finding a glimmer of hope in these lines of Walt Whitman:4
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER When I heard the learn'd astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. Walt Whitman
That poem spoke to me about the discovery of beauty and silent wonder in nature as a distinct way of knowing that exists apart but not in conflict with scientific knowledge. My heart leapt somewhat akin I imagined to John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb. I felt the weightiness of moist places and an epiphany of silence.
So at the end of the 1980’s I found myself in La Jolla, California. I came there to attend an event called Harmonia Mundi. This was a gathering of artists, poets and contemplatives of various religious traditions. I had gone there to see Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, who was the keynote speaker. Robert Bly was there too as well as Joanna Macy. I was bedazzled. On one of the mornings I sat in on a workshop on Centering Prayer, given by Abbot Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk from the same religious order as Thomas Merton. Keating and other contemplatives like Basil Pennington and William Meninger had developed a version of contemplative prayer for everyday people like me, who were living in the world, not monasteries. Centering Prayer is grounded in catholic contemplative classics such as the anonymous medieval Cloud of Unknowing, the dark night tradition of Saint John of the Cross, and the almost zen-like mysticism of Meister Eckhart. The difference is that it is meant to be practiced daily in two 20 minute sessions, more than manageable for those of us living in the world. It was here that I was finally introduced to the “how to” of contemplative prayer.
The practice seems simple on the surface: Choose a sacred word, usually one of the names of God. Sit comfortably, eyes closed or open. Each time a thought arises, become aware of it and watch it silently as it exists, and watch it as it passes away. Keating explained it as thoughts being like boats that come into view, sail by, and then out of sight. At this point, interiorly pronounce your sacred word and return to silence. Remain in the silence open to God’s presence and action in your life. When the next thought arises, exists and passes repeat the sacred word again. Do that each time this happens. At the end of 20 minutes, open your eyes and pray the Our Father aloud, slowly as if you never prayed it before. Let the words bring you back to an ordinary state of awareness. Abbot Keating was careful to explain that thoughts are not bad but are actually an integral part of Centering Prayer. They will always arise. The important thing is to notice them and notice each time they end. The sacred word is a sign of your intention to sit in silence with God.
Harmonia Mundi was a life changing experience for me in so many ways. When I returned home, I began to practice what Father Keating had taught. I delved into the Buddhist practice of Insight Meditation as well, and was struck by the wisdom in that tradition. I was also struck by the similarities in technique between these two kinds of prayer, both born out of monastic traditions. Though understood slightly differently, both produce an ability to look deeply at one’s thoughts resulting in a gradual but very real shedding of what is broken, hurting and false within us. This period of my life was instrumental in the retention of my Catholic faith and a deeper opening of my soul to God’s loving and creative presence.
When a river sings
As time passed I discovered that the boundaries between ecological areas such as forest and grassland, mountains and pasture land, and even trees and sidewalks are places filled with life in an energy and abundance. The creatures who live on the edges show us what it’s like to live in two worlds. They sit in the in-between and flourish. There is something about these places that captures us and moves us into a contemplative mind-state. I happen to be particularly fond of water birds: geese, heron, sea gulls, and such. When I am in their presence, I quiet down and I slow down. The effect is visceral and palpable. Heart rates and blood pressures decrease. There’s a good reason people vacation at the sea shore. It’s a peaceful place and we feel this peace in our minds and bodies. Poets often seek inspiration where water and land meet. They gaze at the horizon, at water and sky, or at the mouths of rivers and estuaries. The shoreline is the lowest place on earth. All the water in lakes and rivers that end up in the oceans have followed a gravitational imperative, travelling downhill before finding the lowest place of all, the enormous sink hole of the world’s oceans. I have found my way there in similar fashion, flowing downhill through the force of a soulful gravitas.
Just after the turn of the millennium, I found myself returning from a work conference in Albany, New York. I had driven out of the Catskills south toward home in New Jersey. I could see the mountains with one eye and the Hudson River below with a simple turn of my head. I was between two worlds, quite literally descending, following the river, my mind still and silent. I felt engulfed in what Saint Paul called the peace that passes understanding. When I got home, I wrote a poem5 inspired by my experience called Riversong. Reciting it even today reproduces a peacefulness in me, a soulfulness that only wild places can evoke.
RIVERSONG What begins in knowledge will end in knowledge And what begins in innocence will end in innocence. This river, so knowledgeable in its infancy as a mountain stream. Up here one strains to see wings pivot on the same air Where the glacier cut through Or geese spread in formation on the silent water. Nobody tells the river how to find the sea It already knows the way. Such a slow passage From the world of inviolable snow And the wisdom that lives inside pine trees To the first taste of salt in the estuary. Now the water swells with a deepness it has not known And a wildness only dreamed of. David Rizzo
It’s now Sunday morning, the year of our Lord 2025, and I’m kneeling in the pew. My knees are letting me know that at 63 years of age, I’m getting old. I see the priest in forest green vestments raising the host. Next to him, the deacon, similarly clad, has raised the chalice. My eyes are fixed on the consecrated host. This focal point for my attention allows me space for a silent and bare attention to the present moment. When I stay there in that space, I am aware of God’s presence right in front of me, even though I can only hold this hyper-attention to the present for a few moments. Invariably, a thought will arise and unfold as it must, but in this hyper-attentive state I am aware of its unfolding, which comes as a discrete photon of thought, slowed down to a speed I can attend to consciously. Once I do, the unfolding thought is no more. I am back in the silent space in between the end of this thought and the beginning of the next one. My gaze returns to the priest and deacon still raising up the host and chalice that is now become an incarnation of God in the world, embodied and present here and now in the center of everything, an axis mundi around which all of creation spins.
I leave the Church and continue through the New Jersey Pinelands on my way to work. Driving, I mark my progress by how many traffic circles I’ve driven through. Traffic circles are plentiful in this part of the state. It takes a good deal of focused attention to drive through them safely. I find myself on the far side of a particular circle and don’t even remember being on it. I can’t recall waiting for the cars on the circle to pass by and let me enter, or whether or not the guy with out of state plates is going to yield to me like he’s supposed to do. I don’t remember any of it but somehow I made it through and am a good deal closer to my destination, even when I blunder through oblivious. I consciously place my hands on the steering wheel and feel my legs and back on the seat, and breathe.
Matthew 18:3
Robert Bly, After Drinking All Night With a Friend, We Go out in a Boat at Dawn to See Who Can Write the Best Poem
St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel
Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
David Rizzo, Riversong, first published in Hidden Oak, Fall/Winter 2002
Bly, Whitman - two of the greats! I think your poem 'Riversong' is marvellous. Thanks for these thoughtful musings, David.