An Advent Calendar for my Friends – December 11

GRÃœNEWALD, Matthias: Concert of Angels and Nativity (detail), c. 1515.
Oil on wood, Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar

The Angel of Quiet

by Anselm Grün

Angels are delicate creatures. You can’t contain them. Angels appear unlooked for. You have to be approachable to be able to meet them. Angels walk on tiptoes. You need a lot of quiet in order to sense them. And there is one angel who wants to introduce you to the art of being silent, in the healing atmosphere of quiet. Especially in our world of turmoil we need a lot of quiet to heal inside. There is the famous saying by Kierkegaard that – if he was a physician – he would advise people: “to create silence”. And Rabindranath Tagore invites us “ to bathe your soul in silence”. Quiet is medicine for our souls, which often have been so polluted by the noise of the world that they cannot breathe any more, because they noisy thoughts and images have penetrated them from all directions.

Greatness needs quiet in order to be born in human beings. “Only in silence true awareness can be reached,” is Romano Guardini‘s opinion. And Johannes Climacus, (Kierkegaard’s pseudonym for) a monk of the early Church, says: “Silence is the fruit of wisdom and encompasses knowledge of all things.” Silence prepares us for really listening, listening to the nuances when a person is talking to us. And quiet is the prerequisite for perceiving God’s voice in our hearts. Many lament nowadays that they do not experience God, that God has become alien to them. But they are so full of turmoil that they miss the quiet impulses of God’s voice in their hearts. We are always busy. As soon as such a delicate impulse appears within us, we drive it away and turn to something tangible. That way we will never perceive God’s voice.

A German word for “silence/quiet”, “Stille” derives from “stillen, beruhigen” “to slake, to quiet” (T/N: “stillen” also means “breast-feeding” in German). The mother offers her breast to the hungry child to quiet its crying. The Angel of Quiet wants to quiet our noisy thoughts, our clamorous desires and needs so that we may discover a space of silence within us. The mystics are convinced that in everyone of us there is a space of silence that cannot be entered by thoughts and emotions, desires and needs. It is a space within me in which I am wholly myself. And it is the space of silence with which God Himself is within me. There I am truly free. There, no one has power over me. There, no one can hurt me. There, I am hale and whole. For me it is a daily necessity to sit down and meditate. During meditation I imagine how my breath and the word that I connect with breath, leads me into this inner space of silence. There, people who will come to my office today cannot enter. There, no one can reach me with their demands and with their judgements and their condemnations. There I can breathe freely. There I am along with my God. This endows my life with dignity. In this inner space of silence I get in touch with my true innermost self. The quiet transforms me as it transformed the cantankerous wife of Rabbi Sussja. It is said that “from this moment on she grew quiet. And when she had become quiet, she became glad. And when she had become glad, she became good.”

Especially if you have to deal with many people, if many make demands on you, if you get involved in intense conversations, you need the Angel of Quiet who will quiet down the many words you listen to on a daily basis. In that quiet you can breathe again. There, you can shake off what others have entrusted you with. The Angel of Quiet wants to lead you to that inner space where not even the people you are there for may enter. Only if you are in touch with your inner space of silence you can reach for people without fear. You don’t have to be afraid that the problems of others will control you or overwhelm you that the ugliness you touch during those conversations will soil you inside.

There is a space where you remain untouched by emotional debris that others want to leave with you. In this inner space of silence you remain hale and whole. The Angel of Quiet may attend you and may remind you again and again that there is already this space of silence within you. You do not have to create it. You only have to touch this silence that is within you and that has the power to heal you. There you are hale and whole. There is something pure and immaculate within you that has not been dulled by the turmoil of the world.

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr;
 translation by JunoMagic.