According to the official Employee Handbook of Trinity Methodist Church, I can grant discretionary office holidays. That rubric gives me permission to close the church office on a Monday following either Christmas or Easter. The Trinity Church offices are closed today.
I’m wondering if I should send a group text to the staff and say, “April Fools.”
On this discretionary holiday, I’m sitting in the silence of the church office. There are a couple of other staff who came to work on this discretionary holiday to catch up on things. Currently, they are as quiet as a church mice.
Easter Sunday is always a great Sunday in church. The pews were full. The music was majestic and inspirational. Today, the office is empty and silent. I am in the office enjoying both the silence and the solitude.
I was reading this morning.
“Solitude is that time when we pull away from our life in the company of others to give our full and undivided attention to God. Silence deepens the experience of solitude. In silence we withdraw not only from outer noise but also from the “inner noise” of our thoughts, human strivings, intellectual hard work, and inner compulsions so that we can listen to God.”
The extraverts reading that just cringed.
Dallas Willard called silence and solitude the two most radical disciplines of the Christian life. Henri Nouwen said that “without solitude it is almost impossible to have a spiritual life.”
These are the most challenging and least practiced disciplines among Christians today. We live in a world in which our phones or digital devices rule our lives. The average silence that a group can stand is fifteen seconds. Most of our church services confirm this. My phone has joined a couple of text groups. It is a great way to share information. It is also an interruption of silence and solitude. While writing this article the texting circle lit up! Proving my point!
I’m going to wrap this up, so I can get back to the silence and the solitude of the church office on the Monday after Easter. Can you put your device down, turn away from the computer screen and try sitting alone in silence for one minute? If that makes you uncomfortable, I think we have discovered a spiritual problem.
