Silence: A User’s Guide, Volume Two: Application

Silence: A User’s Guide

Volume 2: Application

Maggie Ross

SILENCE: A USER’S GUIDE

Volume 2: Application

Copyright © 2018 Maggie Ross. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-62564-797-9

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8795-1

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-1208-4

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Ross, Maggie

Title: Silence: a user’s guide : volume 2: application / Maggie Ross.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-62564-797-9 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-8795-1 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-1208-4 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Silence—Religious aspects—Christianity | Spiritual life—Christianity | Spirituality

Classification: BV4509.5 R67 2018 (print) | BV4509.5 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 04/18/14

The author gratefully acknowledges The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, for the cover illustration from the Rothchild Canticles.

All biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Common Bible translation, unless otherwise noted.

Boydell and Brewer has given permission to reuse and dissect the paper The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich, first published in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England V. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 1992.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

One: Textual Silence

Two: Old Testament Silence

Three: New Testament Silence

Four: Liturgical Silence

Excursus: A Rite for Contemplative Eucharist

Five: Behold

Select Bibliography

Also by Maggie Ross

Silence: A User’s Guide, Volume 1: Process

Writing the Icon of the Heart

Seasons of Death and Life

Pillars of Flame

The Fountain and the Furnace

The Fire of Your Life

This book is dedicated to

Vincent Gillespie

J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Language and Literature

in the University of Oxford

and to

Pauline Matarasso

Scholar, Mentor, Friend

Behold, Lord, the waves of thy grace

close my mouth with silence, and there is not a thought left in me,

not even for giving thanks unto thee.

Introduction

In this volume we turn to texts, liturgy, and beholding. It has been a very difficult book to write, as having discussed silence at length in Volume 1, it is as if I myself have been silenced. But there is merit in looking into texts and liturgy to apply the model of the mind described in the first volume on the work of silence, the self-forgetfulness that leads to beholding, and the transfiguration that is its consequence.

Books are often full of surprises for their authors and this one was no exception. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that chapter 3 turned itself into an exposition of New Testament texts on glory, that kenosis is glory. That kenosis is glory has been a theme in my writing since the beginning, but this is the most explicit demonstration yet. The thread of the glory of the human person as the other side of the kenosis coin runs through the New Testament and much of the Old, but it has been badly neglected and needs to be foregrounded, especially in our age when the degradation of the human person is ubiquitous, and the grinding pressure of consumerism relentless. Given the political erosion of democracy that is taking place in many countries, understanding the glory and transfiguration of the human person becomes ever more important and subversive.

To learn to read a text for the portals of silence that are implicit is to gain a powerful tool for supporting and expanding one’s silence, and to open the reader to the insight that ensues. I hesitate to use the phrase lectio divina because of the pious musings often associated with it. The sort of reading I am proposing in this volume is a far cry from such manipulations, and is both more costly and more rewarding. Once again, these pages invite readers to look at their own minds, to reflect on what is happening there, and to understand the essential role of silence for being human, and for living our own truth with one another.

Chapter One discusses reading texts in general and reading for silence in particular, and suggests a rather unorthodox reading of the Pseudo-Dionysius.

Chapter Two suggests ways of reading the Old Testament for its silences so that the subversive Old Testament God may be revealed.

Chapter Three looks at the New Testament, which is explicit in its discussion of the model of the mind presented in Volume 1, and the glory to which it is the key.

Chapter Four discusses ways that silence could and should be restored to liturgy and why. It gives an example of a catechetical rite that takes the participants to the roots of Eucharist from which other forms of liturgy may emerge.

Chapter Five is an ecomium on the word behold and contains a short conclusion.

The rest is silence.

Feast of the Transfiguration, 2017

ONE

Textual Silence

Silence is a mystery of the age to come, but words are instruments of this world. . . . [K]now that every loquacious man is inwardly empty,though he discourse on amazing things . . . If you love the truth, love silence.This will make you illumined in God . . . and will deliver you from the illusions of ignorance. Silence unites you to God himself.

—Isaac of Nineveh¹

The ancient and medieval view of scriptural and ritual symbols involved both subtle theories of the cognitive process and the conviction that this process was not just a matter of human will and skill but a spiritual journey through the symbols to God.

—Paul Rorem²

. . . the Aristotelian sect is now dominant, which thinks the coincidence of opposites heresy, while the admission of such a heresy is the beginning of mystic theology. Theirs is a science which lies in disputatious exercises and it seeks a victory of words (by which) it is inflated: inflatus vanitate verbalis scientiae.

—Nicholas of Cusa³

In Volume 1 of this book, we looked at the model of two aspects of knowing, which optimally work together, ideally becoming a single, seamless, reciprocal flow between self-conscious mind and deep mind, each informing and enhancing the other—what I have called the work of silence. It is not necessary to believe anything to embark on the work of silence, even if it is being used only for the purpose of engaging a text (or work of art); but it should be noted that the act of letting go one’s preconceptions is the same for nonbeliever and believer alike. This process entails relinquishing the modern solipsistic notion of experience that sets up preconceptions and expectations, which are inimical to inhabiting a text or the transfiguration (change of perspective, the way we figure things out) of perspective.

Sebastian Brock describes Ephrem’s fourth-century journey through the various modes of knowing. His receptivity and openness is a model for working with the tropes and silences of ancient, patristic, and medieval texts: that is, engagement and reciprocity between the two aspects of knowing. For the nonbeliever, Ephrem’s God, commerce, meditation, and reciprocity can refer simply to deep mind or truth. His love and wonder, however, have no substitute, for they have been acknowledged as the foundation of philosophy from the time of the ancient Greeks to this day. We must also remember that until approximately the twelfth century what we today call theology was then called philosophy, and it was understood that there was no philosophy/theology without praxis, without working with the mind by means of what I am calling the work of silence:

Theology, like any other intellectual pursuit, can take on three different forms, depending on the attitude of mind present in the person setting out on the path of enquiry. In the first place the mind may seek to dominate and subjugate the object of its enquiry. Such an attitude has characterized much scientific and other enquiry from the time of Francis Bacon onwards. Whether rightly or wrongly, Ephrem saw this as the basic attitude of many heretical thinkers of his own time: in the field of theology, in particular, such intellectual pride is utterly abhorrent to him.

A second approach takes on what at first seems a much more acceptable form, a form that is typical of much theological enquiry today: here the mind sets out to study the object of its enquiry in as dispassionate and scientific a way as possible. It is an approach that in many spheres is of course very fruitful, and it is one that Ephrem implies that he himself tried—but found wanting: Turn me back to Your teaching: I wanted to stand back, but I saw that I became the poorer. For the soul does not get any benefit except through converse with You (Faith

32

:

1

).

The third approach, which is Ephrem’s, is that of engagement above all of love and wonder. Whereas the second approach involves only a one-way movement, from the mind to the object of enquiry, this third approach is a two-way affair, involving a continual interaction. Only by means of such an interaction of love can human knowledge of divine truth grow. Ephrem continues in the same hymn:

Whenever I have meditated upon You

I have acquired a veritable treasure from You;

Whatever aspect of You I have contemplated,

a stream has flowed from You.

There is no way in which I can contain it:

Your fountain, Lord, is hidden

from the person who does not thirst for You;

Your treasury seems empty

to the person who rejects You.

Love is the treasurer

of your heavenly treasure store (Faith

32

:

2

–

3

).

The way in which we perceive both God and the created world about us thus depends on our basic attitude and approach, whether as objects of enquiry somehow separate from our selves, or whether we see our selves as irrevocably involved in the object of our enquiry—and, in the case of theology, whether we are willing to participate in the mystery concerned. Ephrem is in no doubt that where knowledge of God is sought, this last way is not only the only acceptable way, but also the only possible one.⁴

In volume one of the present work, we saw how this optimal relationship is a perennial threat to institutions and those who support them, for the work of silence makes people incoercible. We saw, too, how the medieval church came to suppress the knowledge of the work of silence with catastrophic consequences for Western Christianity, and the humanities and sciences down to and including the present day. We saw how, in consequence, some interpreters mistake method for philosophy when reading pre-fifteenth-century texts and some modern texts (e.g., Simone Weil), and that without this knowledge translators make egregious errors in their rendering of these texts.

In addition, we noted how translations have become flattened, and how this flattening has affected negatively the creation of many modern analytical texts as well as literature. We have also looked at the problem of the anachronistic insertion of the word experience into many of these translations, and how emphasis on modern notions of experience are contrary to both the intent and meaning of these texts. We looked at the roots of these problems, which are found in the distancing of human beings from the natural world into which they were once integrated, so that they understand neither their own world nor that of the other, whether that other is the ecology, another person, a text, or approaches to the divine.

In Volume 2, I would like to turn to various applications of the model of the work of silence. I will give examples of how ancient and medieval authors used various tropes to finesse and subvert the self-reflexive linearity of language, and how the modern reader can use the work of silence to enter more deeply into texts, both as reader and writer. In part, this involves reading texts as poetry, such as Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons on the Song of Songs, for example, even if they are set out as prose; for their uses of metaphor, hyperbole, and self-subversion, along with other tropes, are misconstrued if they are taken at face value or read literally. They rather have to be read literarily.

In 1992, Vincent Gillespie and I published a paper entitled The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich. This paper was well received, as were Gillespie’s Postcards from the Edge (1992) and my Apophatic Prayer as a Theological Model (1993) However, it has become clear over the past two decades that many readers have not entirely understood the foundational principles outlined in these papers, which relate to the work of silence. In consequence, in 2011, Vincent Gillespie asked me to write the paper that became Behold Not the Cloud of Experience (2013), a prequel to the other three papers. The themes from this last paper have already been partly explored in Volume 1, but I would like to begin Volume 2 by reverting to some of the main points of the original paper, The Apophatic Image, from which the other papers have sprung.

It may seem paradoxical to analyze a paper that attempts to encourage readers to allow their analytic faculty to be destabilized, bypassed, and negated; to understand that paradoxes must be allowed to stand because they bring the linear and discursive mind to a halt so that deep mind has an opportunity to bring its holistic perspective to bear; or to suggest general categories for some of the tropes that seek precisely to transgress categorical boundaries. But the Cartesian methodology in which most students are trained binds them with a chain whose links are very difficult to break, and thus a certain amount of explanation in their own terms seems necessary to pry them open. In addition, Vincent Gillespie’s and my understanding of the impact and nuances of certain words has both expanded and clarified, and it might be useful to show how certain terms have carried over—or have been discarded or changed—since 1992–93. As I cannot speak for Gillespie, these changes reflect my views alone, although he has seen what I have written and is happy with it.

For example, what we called apophatic consciousness in 1992, I now call deep mind; the terms are interchangeable:

To enter apophatic consciousness, the seeker must simultaneously desire it intensely and give up all desire. This paradox is deliberately subversive. It threatens the logical, hierarchical command and control structures that motivate the human need to resolve, categorise and classify. It challenges our sense of the ordinary, threatens our usual interpretative patterns and displaces our dominant modes of perception. Like the self-emptying humility of Christ on the Cross it defies reconciliation to the logic of the world. It is a sign of contradiction, allowing the creative tension between its conflicting significations to generate a precious stillness, a chink in the defensive wall of reason that allows slippage into apophatic consciousness.⁵ [This approach echoes T. S. Eliot’s line about caring/not caring and sitting still. To read in this way is not a short-cut; it is rather a quantum leap.]⁶

Although in some ways apophatic consciousness is a better phrase, I switched to deep mind for several reasons: first, the word apophatic is unfamiliar to some readers, while for other readers, it has been over-used to the point that it is almost as useless as the term mystical and its cognates. It also seems to have taken on the nuance of leaving ordinary life in a sort of minds cut off from bodies aspect.

Apophatic can refer to a method of argument, to the effacement of images, to the relinquishing of images, to iconoclasm, and to understanding and insight given in consequences of the self-emptying of kenosis—these are but a few of its uses. In addition, there are myriad problems with the word consciousness: modern authors often limit it to reflexivity, to self-consciousness, without distinguishing the various modes of consciousness or awareness it entails. In no way is apophatic consciousness an altered state or trance or other deviation from ordinary life. It optimally works seamlessly and reciprocally with self-conscious mind. This holistic process results in living the ordinary through transfigured perception.

Apophatic consciousness also can be confusing in that, as we have seen in the previous volume, the self-conscious mind identifies and categorizes what it encounters by an apophatic process, by telling itself what the object is not. In addition, the deep mind, which perceives directly, is itself apophatic, hidden from what we perceive as our selves, that is to say, our ideas of our selves which the self-conscious mind constructs: our self-consciousness cannot directly access or control deep mind, although to a certain extent our self-consciousness can influence through intention some of what deep mind thinks about/works on