Silence, Stillness and Sanctuary
About 25 years ago, in his book Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore suggested that the greatest malady of our time was neither heart disease nor cancer, but loss of soul: loss of wisdom about it, loss of interest in it. “When soul is neglected,” he wrote, “it doesn’t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning.”
While Moore warned against efforts at precise definition, he associates the word soul with depth and authenticity in our lives. As such, the expression and exploration of soul can be present in our ordinary daily rounds−our work, love and play, as well as in rare moments of crisis, insight or vision. The practices most commonly devoted to the cultivation of soul, its renewal and redemption, are imagination, contemplation, meditation, prayer, lectio divina.
My model of a place dedicated to such nourishment – the one I know best – is the Meditation Room at The United Nations in New York City. It was designed by Dag Hammarskjöld when he was the UN’s Secretary General. He described it as a space “dedicated to silence in the outward sense and stillness in the inner sense. We want to bring back, in this room, the stillness which we have lost in our streets and in our conference rooms, and to bring it back in a setting in which no noise would impinge on our imagination. There is an ancient saying that the sense of a vessel is not in its shell but in the void. So it is with this room. It is for those who come here to fill the void with what they find in their center of stillness.”
Probably the best word descriptive of such a space is sanctuary. I am moved by the intimate resonance, the sense of safety and nourishment, the diversity of experiences that word evokes. I recall my wise friend and colleague Parker Palmer speaking of its evolution, nuance and importance in his own life. “Sanctuary,” he said, “is wherever I find safe space to regain my bearings, reclaim my soul, heal my wounds, and return to the world as a wounded healer. It’s not merely about finding shelter from the storm: it’s about spiritual survival.”
Thomas Moore
Derived from the Latin sanctum, sanctuary typically describes a sacred or holy place, a refuge. I have found that quality in church and temple services, and I sit in churches when no service is occurring, treasuring in silence just those qualities of refuge. And like Parker, I've found sanctuary among trees, along trails, on shorelines, and in my home. But most of all, loving and working as I do in a residential community, I’ve come to know the grace of sanctuary in silent space dedicated to its nourishment.
Gunella Norris eloquently conveys its significance as she contemplates its absence:
Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.
In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.
Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.