Our need for silence and recollection

WE need to realize this human requirement deeply. We need
to have silence and spirit of recollection even as we immerse
ourselves in our human, mundane and temporal affairs, so that we would
not lose the moorings and focus in life that is proper to us as
persons and ultimately as children of God.

            Definitely, our need for silence and recollection is not a
matter of being indifferent and detached from the things of the world.
It’s not a form of escapism. It is not a way of alienating us from the
world and from others. Quite the contrary is true.

            When we properly satisfy this need, our involvement in our
worldly affairs becomes deeper and more realistic. We would be
engaging ourselves in what truly matters in life. We avoid being
carried away by strong blind worldly forces that can be exhilarating
and captivating but can lead us nowhere in the end. We avoid
dispersion and dissipation.

            This realization of our radical need for silence and
recollection is most relevant these days since we are bombarded with
so many things that tend to confuse and blind us, and alienate us from
the source of everything that is true and good. This source is, of
course, God.

            In fact, for Christian believers, the very source and end
of their consciousness should be God. This is simply because the
Christian faith teaches that God is the creator of the whole universe,
including us, and continues to govern us intimately in our hearts.

            We need to be focused always on him for us to be properly
in touch with reality. Straying from him would be to stray from
reality. It would lead us to make our own reality and our own world, a
purely subjective world that can be detached from the objective one.
We would simply be at the mercy of our own estimation of things.

            For Christian believers, reality is not simply the items
that we see or hear or even feel and understand. Reality is a given,
not made by us. It has to be discovered, not invented by us. But it
has to enter deep into our being, since we have a subjective mode of
existence, meaning that we are meant to know and love everything the
way God, the Creator, knows and loves them.

            Since our society today is characterized by a constant and
unstoppable flow of information, we need silence and recollection all
the more not so much as an antidote to the noise around as a necessary
way to be able to integrate things properly.

            Silence and recollection favor the habit of discernment
and reflection. With silence and recollection, we would be in a better
position to listen to and understand ourselves as well as others.
Through silence and recollection, ideas easily come to birth and
acquire depth. We would better know what we want to say, what we
expect from others. We would know how to express ourselves in a more
appropriate way.

            When there is silence and recollection, we can understand
people better, and avoid being simply tied down to our opinions,
preferences and biases. We foster mutual listening, and a deeper human
relationship comes as a consequence. With silence and recollection, a
better communication with others is made possible

            With silence and recollection, we can better distinguish
between what is essential and what simply incidental. They enable us
to discover the links between events that at first sight seem
unconnected. We can better analyze messages and share thoughtful and
relevant opinions. So we need to find a good balance between silence,
words, images and sounds.

            All these would give us some lightness of heart and spirit
and would enable us to get in sync with God’s will and ways, and to
adapt ourselves to any human situation, good or bad. They would give
us a sense of dominion, of self-master over our senses, emotions and
passions.

            We need to spread this concern as widely as possible,
since there is now an urgent need for these skills to be learned by
all. Things should begin with the family. We have to inculcate the
proper attitude and teach the proper skills especially to the young
who are now very vulnerable to fall into excesses and addiction, into
dispersion and dissipation, wasting time and effort.

            Parents should be the primary teachers and models for this
purpose. They should realize that children learn things first in the
family before they do in school and in other places.