Other than that, they doing shadow puppets, carve pumpkins, set up slot car racing, and appear to use model train construction as a means of meditation. Oh, and Bill wasn’t totally right about it. They do break silence over the credits. Apparently, their vows of silence are only for a term and then they expire, giving the monks a couple days to speak before going back into silence—so the film-makers waited for a couple of these terms to end (they happened to coincide with each other) and the arranged those monks to do some karaoke over the closing credits. They’re better than you’d think.

It wasn’t the best two hours I’d ever spent, but it was entertaining in its own right. Except for when the ditchdigger killed the otter. That was just disturbing.

The Danes last blog post..20080612

Bill Reicharts last blog post..Christian College Students Don’t Know Christianity

Bill Reicharts last blog post..Christian College Students Don’t Know Christianity

Bill Reicharts last blog post..Christian College Students Don’t Know Christianity

Bill Reicharts last blog post..Christian College Students Don’t Know Christianity

I was about to contact the authorities.

“Yes officer, well at a webzine I write for we have a regular commenter who has not been on for a week and a half. Needless to say we are concerned. Either he has found another site or he has been kidnapped. We suspect the latter.”

Next time please leave a comment clearly outlining your itinerary and a contact number in case we need some emergency nitpicking or general intellectual shenanigans.

No but seriously, it was weird when you were gone.

And since rest in Christ is a state in which we ideally find ourselves at all times (whether in solitude or in company, whether in silence or cacophony, whether in action or inaction), it cannot be related to the state of our circumstance. And we shouldn’t look to molding our circumstances to try to assist what is ultimately wrought by grace in faith.

The Danes last blog post..20080612

Great to have you back! CAPC hasn’t been the same without you brother.

Again I don’t this post to be misunderstood as an endorsement of monasticism. I think there are a lot of problems and concerns with a separate and merely personal pious life. But I was using these monks as a springboard for something that I am lacking in my modern life – solitude and stillness.

I purposefully allow noise and busyness in my life to avoid God. And that is a problem. I would disagree with you in this statement.
“The stillness of heart that we prize as believers is an internal condition unrelated to either stillness of body or stillness of mouth.”

I think that view (separate the soul from the body) is more of a Platonic notion and not a biblical one.

What we do with our body is not irrelevant to our soul. If the body was irrelevant than the bodily resurrection would be as well, as well as our future resurrection.

Bill Reicharts last blog post..Christian College Students Don’t Know Christianity

I’d just like to point out that silence and stillness have no intrinsic tie to one another. In fact, so loose is the tie that we might even say that they have nothing to do with each other. The stillness of heart that we prize as believers is an internal condition unrelated to either stillness of body or stillness of mouth. Presumably, even these monks wouldn’t presume that such stillness refers to a stillness of the mind—for meditation necessarily entails a certain fleetness of the mind (excepting perhaps transcendental meditation, which bears striking little resemblance to Christian meditation).

It any case, a biblical stillness of mind seems rather to point to a liberation from worry—and not to simply taking care of one’s anxieties so that they no longer afflict, but to finding a true and honest Sabbath rest in one’s identity in Christ.

As far as Jesus heading off to mountaintops, I may be wrong, but we are not told his motivation for doing so (save for the insinuation once or twice that he was hiding himself from the zealotry of those who did not understand his plan). And so it seems a bit presumptuous (and perhaps blasphemous) to give him a motivation. Of course, I could be mistaken and we could be given a motive for his separation, but without that motive, we can’t really use his mountain solitudes as an example to us.

As far as monks go, their segregation from the world, their vows of silence, and their monastic living do not seem so very compatible with the church as we see it revealed in Scripture—a body well engaged in the world and culture about it.

@Mink – One person’s sound is another’s noise. And vice versa. And still, sound or noise, none of this has to do with biblical stillness.

As far as monasteries providing community, I suppose they do provide a particular brand of community—but its a decisively narrow brand. And it does little for the benefit of the greater body of Christ. It’s like taking denominationalism (something that is already an embarrassment to the church) to an unhealthy extreme.

The Danes last blog post..20080612

LOL, It helps to stay awake if you don’t close your eyes and lay under the covers. :-)

Bill Reicharts last blog post..Christian College Students Don’t Know Christianity

I bet it was some pretty restful silence!

By evacuating from the world of “noise” they have put themselves in a posture to do an act of worship that many of us cannot – to come in stillness before God constantly, as individuals but also as a committed Christian community. We are upheld in ways we will not know until heaven by the faithful and sacrificial prayers of the seemingly extreme monastics.

They work to balance the far greater number of us at the other extreme – we who no longer talk to fellow train commuters but isolate ourselves with our iPod, and who have the radio playing in the car at all times, and who spend our time in nature mowing or jet-skiing in it rather than listening to it.

@Hooser: We who are noise-immersed manage to navel-gaze and disconnect from others far more than any monks I’ve spent time with. I’ve known plenty of noise-o-philes who were sardonic jerks. I suspect the noise/silence issue does not wholly determine a person’s level of self-absorption. Furthermore, monasteries exist to prevent unhealthy individualism, and cultivate individual growth and healing through Christ and His Church. Every society needs more community of the type they model.

Into Great Silence provoked me to remember and re-acknowledge the value of silence – of the way it allows a unique way of vital connection with God, and the way it heals us from the burden that constant noise (self-inflicted or out of our control) lays on our bodies, minds and souls, and of the way it allows us to return to sound with greater alertness and appreciation of what a gift sound is.

Bill Reicharts last blog post..Enter Into the Great and Disturbing Silence

I think your concerns are legitimate, but I hardly think the solution is to throw out all solitude! Jesus certainly spent time in solitude “He got alone to pray!” The point isn’t just “being alone,” at least not for the Christian…but being alone with God and holy thoughts!

Good word brother. I may have to force myself to do this…but I think I’ll give it a shot!