A profound exploration of the ache for quiet in a chaotic, noisy time of overstimulation and distraction--and the transformative effects of solitude, silence, and stillness--from the Modern living is inundated with noise, busyness, and a digital cycle fueled by outrage and fear. We are anxious, overstimulated, exhausted, and bone-dry in our souls. We ache for God yet can barely pay attention. Drawing on the wisdom of the contemplative tradition and spiritual practices that date back to the earliest centuries of the church, Comer invites readers to rediscover an ancient path of quiet, peace, and serenity--to step out of the chronic noise and constant motion of the modern world into the still, silent presence of the God of peace. What As with the pace of modern living, the volume of the modern world can cut off our hearts from God, colonize our minds, and make “practicing the presence of God” virtually impossible. It can damage our bodies and degrade our spirits. Comer is convinced quiet is the antidote--not just the quiet of a retreat or a morning hour, but an intentional quest to de-noise your overall life. And in doing so, to live just a little slower and softer before God.

Autorentext

John Mark Comer

Leseprobe
Beginning

A World of Noise

Twenty-one days.

In an isolated cabin, tucked into a moody, coastal forest above a remote beach in Puget Sound.
All *alone.
*
No phone.

No computer, email, or internet. You are required to hand over any devices upon check-in.

No *books.
*
A Bible is “allowed,” but with a gentle warning not to use it as a “distraction from God.”

No alcohol, no more than one cup of coffee per day, no exercise, even—nothing to “discharge the anxiety from your body.” A daily walk along the remote coastline is fine, but nothing that will get your heart rate up.

And no contact with people. I pack in all my own food, do all my own cooking—totally cut off from the outside world.

My sole human interaction takes place five mornings a week, at 5:50 A.M.—“because early in the morning your mind is more open to its subconscious”—when I sit for ninety minutes of depth therapy with a clinical psychologist. In his seventies, he is a true doctor of the soul. Thin white hair cascades past his shoulders; he looks suspiciously like Gandalf from the *Lord of the Rings.
*
Depth therapy is similar to regular therapy, minus the happy feelings at the end of a session. It’s aimed at identifying how your early childhood experiences created the subconscious patterns you live by today, which generally means facing a lot of your pain. I lie on a couch, feeling more than a little anxious, with Gandalf sitting behind me. We begin day one with my relationship with my father: “Let’s bring Dad into the room.” By day three, my mother. Then we trace the story of my life in concentric circles up to the present day. Over the next three weeks, we work through all of it.

As the sun comes up, it’s me and the wizard. We’re usually done by seven-thirty.

Then, until the sun goes down, it’s just me, the broken pieces of my soul, and God.

Each day, Gandalf gives me an assignment of some kind: to think about an aspect of my past; to journal about this, that, or the other; to occasionally do something theatrical (like the time he had me sit in the back of my car and re-create an experience of almost dying from SIDS in the car seat at six weeks old). The assignment usually takes me about an hour.

Nine A.M.: Twelve more hours to go.

Seven hours a week in therapy.

One hundred sixty-one utterly, completely alone.

This program is more than fifty years old, yet it has no name, no website, and no marketing strategy. I heard whispers of it for years but, honestly, what kind of person has time to go fully off-grid for three weeks? Not me. Until I did. After stepping down from a twenty-year run pastoring a church, I was gifted a once-in-a-lifetime sabbatical—and with it, a chance to go into monk mode for a little while.

It’s now or never.

As an isolophile (an introvert with a natural affinity for time alone in the quiet), I was betting on myself to nail it. Not only am I wired to enjoy time alone, but I’ve been teaching on solitude for years. Honestly, I was looking forward to it. I was bone-weary after two decades of pastoring. If nothing else, twenty-one days away from my phone would offer a much-needed digital detox. I figured the effect on my central nervous system alone would be worth the monkish austerity.
Easy, I thought.

*It was one of the most painful, harrowing, terrifying things I have ever done.
*
I barely made it through.

What did you do with all that time alone, you ask?

Reasonable question. I’m still not sure. I drew out every possible distraction—cooking, cleaning, walking-walking-walking, a daily cold plunge in the winter sea. But mostly I just sat there, feeling my pain, facing a life I’d been running away from, and listening—for God, and for the skittish fawn of my own soul.

By day three, I’m dying, more depressed than I’ve been in years, my dopamine levels in free fall. I realize that while I’ve spent a lot of time in “solitude, silence, and stillness,” I’ve always gone in with a bag of emotional props to keep me busy—books to read, a laptop for writing and calendar planning, a to-do list of projects, the occasional bottle of wine. What I had been calling a spiritual discipline was really more like alone time for a Christian introvert to do deep work.

Sure, I would pray and read Scripture and seek God, but it’s not like I would just sit there.

A few days in, I’m already over it. I mean, there is nothing to do; the boredom is crushing. And I still don’t understand the why behind all the rules.

“Why no books?” I ask the wizard. “Books are a vital part of my spiritual life.”

He is quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “This program was designed to re-create the experience of Jesus in the desert. All the great ones went into the desert—Jesus, Moses, Elijah . . .”

Then he says a line that is still with me: “And the desert teaches by taking away.”

I realize, I’m used to learning by addition—by reading books like this one in your hand or hearing teachings or listening to podcasts or asking a mentor a flurry of important questions while scribbling down their sagacious replies in my journal.

All good things.

But the desert teaches by subtraction, by stripping things away until the soul is naked before its maker.

In the desert, all our props—our coping mechanisms, our escapist behaviors, our cultural narcotics, all the things we use to numb our pain and hide from the reality of our lives—are burned away and our souls are laid bare.

Until you go into the desert, you don’t really know what’s in *you.
*
In my “desert” of the rainy Pacific Northwest, I discovered a lot that was in me—good, bad, and ugly.

So many things came up from the substrata to the surface of my heart: how much of my life was run largely by the animating energy of fear; how much I loved my family, and how much I’d hurt them, too; all my regrets, the wounds inflicted over so many years of life and leadership, both on me and by me.

It was like I finally stopped running and the accumulated pain residue of half a life finally caught up with me and had its way.

I was undone.

And yet, as the days passed, I began to learn by direct experience what I had only heard rumor of thus far: the raw power of simply be…