“Without this contemplative spirit, the liturgy will remain an occasion for hateful divisions and ideological confrontations instead of being the place of our unity and of our communion in the Lord.”

Robert Cardinal Sarah, The Power of Silence,

“Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are.”

John 17:11

I’ve always been an opinionated person. As a child, I remember having this fire inside of me, a fierce sense of working for justice and truth, of weeding out the falsehoods and lies of our day and speaking truth into a world shattered by social, moral, and economic injustice.

It seems that anyone who tries to speak against the status quo or ask important questions is quickly silenced. I was as a young girl. The voices of the oppressed, too, have always been easily extinguished by power and greed and all sorts of vices.

Today, there are many voices vying to be heard and accepted. We live in a day and age in which people of every race, culture, and creed are discovering their own voices and thus cry from the depths of their soul-pain. It’s as if the shackles have finally been broken, and many are free to express their long-suffering, their brokenness, their histories of abuse and violence.

I’ve always believed that every one of us has an important story to tell. A story shared is a voice heard. I’m learning that, as I, too, rediscover who I am and attempt to speak light into the darkness, my voice is only one of many.

Several years ago, I wrote an essay. It was 1993, and I was a sixth grader. My parents gave me the withered, yellowing pages printed on the Dot Matrix, because it was unearthed as part of a citywide time capsule. My words were buried twenty-five years ago and have recently come to light.

As I reread what I wrote, my emotions ranged from astonished to proud to wistful. Every student in my city was assigned to write an essay about world affairs in 1993. But I find them to be just as applicable today as they were so long ago:

1993 is really screwed up. There’s too much starvation, riots, wars, and hatred. Every time you turn on the television to see the news, something worse has happened than an incident you thought was really bad on the news the day before.

What is our world becoming? Another major conflict is violence. Say you’re arguing with someone about a certain belief and this person gets mad because you don’t agree with him, so he shoots you or beats you up.

I have written about how 1993 is because I think people should know about all of this in order to make it better. I believe that somehow, by 2018, I can change our world.

I was twelve. These words haunt me today—violence, riots, hatred.

God the Father spoke His Son, the Word, into being. Out of silence is greatness born. From the depths, the abyss of nothingness, He created the world and everything in it—including the human race. Silence is powerful, because it can bring forth life or kill the spirit. As Christians, it’s time for us to revisit the “still, small voice” within us—the Holy Spirit—to listen before we speak, to ponder before we participate in the din and division of the outside world.

My spiritual director long ago told me, “Whatever breaks your heart also breaks God’s heart.” How His Heart must be shattering from all the brokenness in the world. And yet, He longs to heal us of our individual and collective wounds.

I wonder often what would happen if we took a step away from the cultural chaos and confusion and just listened again? Listened to God, listened to each other? God does not operate in calamity or violence. He beckons us to work for unity, that we may first come back to Him.

Then we will find our way back to each other, as brothers and sisters with a shared humanity and common destination.

None of us can create constructive change without first returning to the Source of Silence, again and again, or perhaps for the first time. It’s why we need to enter the sanctuaries of our churches with the intention of making room for God. When we are empty of the hustled and harried thoughts we hold, God fills us with Himself. We understand unity with people when we return to frequent communion with God.

Before entering college, my then-counselor gave me a book called Hope for the Flowers. Two little caterpillars, Stripe and Yellow, enjoyed their lives for a time before becoming disillusioned and restless. They, as we do, longed for something more. So they crawled along a dusty path to find something very revealing and enticing—a caterpillar pillar. Towering beyond the treetops was a pile of caterpillar bodies, each climbing to discover what was at the top.

Isn’t that what we are doing when we attempt to communicate our stories without first engaging in a spirit of contemplation? Thought drives intention and the will. Silence of the Spirit brings forth life and new ideas, all born from love. We need to stop following the confusion and urgency, to walk away from the places where we are no longer nourished but instead stifled and suffocated.

Maybe we avoid silence, because we have been imprisoned by it. Our needs have long been drowned by the more powerful majority. We’ve felt swallowed by the monster of an era and a people who did not allow us that necessary sacred space to reflect and speak what has long been overdue.

But the silence of evil differs greatly from spiritual silence. If any of us wish to see the wounds of racism, sexism, classism, etc. cauterize, then it’s vital for us to go back to the place within ourselves where the Spirit dwells. That is our true safe space—our souls—and from it we draw upon the wellspring of truth, goodness, peace, and authentic Christian unity.

As an adult, I still carry a fire inside, a zeal for working actively against evil and oppression. But I also know the infinite value of retreating inward before acting upon my big emotions, of listening to God’s voice when I am incensed or deeply hurt. He calms those interior storms and heals me gently from within.

Then I am able to carry to the world what I have first received from God—in the silence.