All Interiority Involves a Deep Relationship to Silence

An Introduction to the Mystery of Silence

Dear Friends,

It is a little hard now to comprehend the searching loneliness I felt in the autumn of 2010 and winter of 2011. The economy, faltering still from the Great Recession, and weekly, doors still closing here, compelled me to relocate for work. I took a two-year grant-funded position at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, six hours east on the coast, leaving, for a time, these Blue Ridge Mountains, and my family, my sons not at all interested in leaving their high school friends. Between regular treks across the state, I sought respite at the shore in the heartbeat rhythm of waves.

Just weeks before leaving home, I had entered a two-year eco-contemplative program with the Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World, a work closely mentored by Thomas Berry, focused on cultivating presence in I–Thou relationship with the Natural World. We were encouraged to read Robert Sardello’s Silence: A Mystery into Wholeness. At the time, silence seemed to me something to seek in relative retreat from sound.

Then came January, a moonless night, cloudy and cold, and a strange winter thunderstorm that startled me awake shortly after midnight. I woke to the thrum of pelting rain, flittering limbs of electricity igniting the sky, and echoes of thunder rattling the windows a few feet right of my head. As I lay there flat on my back in the cacophony, it came to me, Enter the Silence. And almost just as soon, as if it had been awaiting my availability to it, there came the most sublime Silence everywhere, as close as the breath, revealing itself behind and between every drop of rain, enlivening the air, kissing my skin, coming to meet me as a suffusive presence. I was not alone in this room. The only difference between this moment and all that came before was that I was now awake to a presence that had always been there.

In those moments after midnight, I was not seeking solace. I was in a state of wide-eyed wonder. And in that open receptivity, the Silence entered me into it.

Then came my trek to the Arctic Ocean thirteen years later, where, stepping out onto the spongy tundra steppe north of the Brooks Mountain Range, I heard nothing. I heard no birdsong, no buzz of insects, no rustling in the bush, no hum of cars, no faint noises from houses, no aircraft overhead. There was only the faint inner susurrus of breath coming from within me. I was steeped in Silence—everywhere. The presence was an immediacy, coming to meet me in the center of my being, as it had that night in Wilmington and many moments since, inviting me into it. It was an intimacy, a prayer, a beseeching. This time, there was a seeming insistence that still leaves me a little tremulous. The Silence seemed to recall in me the primordial human presence to the numinous Presence everywhere. What, today, we deem past, present, and future collapsed and expanded into an undulating now. In the stillness of this as yet (mostly) untouched wild Earth out here, It seemed to whisper, You—every living You—are breathed into by the breath of God. I would open my mouth, my chest, my breath to receive It, the way a child looks toward the heavens and opens up to receive a mouthful of rain. I began to have the sense that the Silence carried with it a wish for me to carry it with me as a promise. I have begun to believe it will take the rest of my life to understand that promise.

It is this Silence, I sense, that Robert Sardello reveals in his book, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness. And in these autumnal days when, here in the US, we prepare to receive in thanksgiving the fruits of seeds sown in spring and summer, I give you today words from the Founder of the Chalice Repose Project and music-thanatologist, Therese Shroeder-Sheker’s Introduction to Sardello’s Silence, written twenty years ago on Thanksgiving Day.

All of this I share by way of further invitation: a wonderful cohort is gathering for the Winter Reading Circle on Sardello’s Silence, which I mentioned last week. If you are interested, have questions, or wish to register, please email me: reneeeliphd [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

Wherever you are, may the blessings of this living Earth, of loved ones, and the Silence be with you now and in the days ahead.

With love,

Renée

Tundra, a few hours south of Dead Horse Camp at the Arctic Ocean, where just a few days ago, the sun set and will not rise again until January 22, 2026

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All Interiority Involves a Deep Relationship to Silence

The Silence the author describes is to be entered, not apprehended.¹

One finds great rest in these pages.²

In nine increasingly deep corridors of an interior journey, Sardello describes how, in the sacramental dynamism of Silence, a new capacity for soul-spirit consciousness allows us to anticipate the world as holy, and in this transformed world, new life is continually coming into being and is perceived as if within liturgy. Urgency abounds, yet without fear, perhaps because heart resonance is sovereign in Silence, prompting the mystery of true prayer. As important, the life of prayer, midwifed through Silence, allows us to experience presences right here amidst daily life.³

Dear friends, make no mistake: Robert Sardello is asking us to abandon surface impressions and patterns, to abandon what has become comfortable, and to embrace a sacred depth of being that asks us to enter that which is wholly unknown and that which fosters genuine metanoia.⁴

This life-renewing Silence heals the ambitious, self-serving, and often cruel goal of self-improvement, and reveals instead the activity of spiritual beings and spiritual life.⁵

[Sardello] ceaselessly advocates the necessity of personal responsibility and the holiness of freedom, encouraging one and all, in whatever their capacity or condition, to the necessity of inner work.⁶

Through the agency of an embodied mystery that is simultaneously humble and noble, the author describes a kind of spiritual activity in which the human heart is the mystical yet literal vessel of pregnancy. ⁷

Sardello is saying that Holy Silence is calling us to bring the entirety of our human experiences and perception to and through a hidden altar, deep within the human body and heart, for the good of the world.⁸

By the time we reach the crowning chapter nine, the author brings us openly into Silence as the foundation of prayer and, by extension, the relationships that are possible with spiritual beings.⁹

Perhaps without ever meaning to, Sardello makes a Johan-nine spirituality palpable. Unashamed to stand vigil with the truly feminine and rooted within the unity of matter and spirit-Word made flesh, he extends, like John, tender goodness, beauty, and truth into the world and notes that this orientation to prayer also transforms our daily speech. Soon, prayer moves out of or sacrifices any tendency to self-centered request, and in that it reflects true conversation (listening and responding) creates an entirely new world.¹⁰

All interiority involves a deep relationship to Silence, and this particular work appears, with perfect timing, at a time when collective emotional noise is almost deafening. This is a book unlike any other. It is easy to see that the discipline of phenomenology, so richly, beautifully, and penetratingly developed as a sustained meditation, calls new and profound capacities into existence. ¹¹

[The] movement from psychology to phenomenological theology, as demonstrated in this slender volume, calls for a radical receptivity united to practical application. Together, as Sardello’s vision so beautifully sings, these create a foundation for service, healing, and worship in a time when our institutional forms are imploding. Though we humans suffer in times of confusion and transition, it is said that our implosions, inner and outer, must occur in order for that which is truly new and living to emerge.¹²

In that light, on this Thanksgiving day, one can only laud Robert Sardello’s quietude, pray that people all over the world find this book, and that they respond again, as once before, to the call of Silence, the voice of Eternity.¹³

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All Beyond the Comfort Zone letters and essays will always be free. Paid subscriptions and donations provide financial support for this publication and make it possible to keep all offerings accessible for everyone. If you have the financial means to support this work, please consider offering a financial contribution today, with my deepest gratitude to you.

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Winter Reading Circle

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Gatherings in Silence

Due to the upcoming Valle Crucis Retreat, our “1st Sunday” Gathering in December will be December 14, 12–1:30 pm ET

These gatherings are an online sanctuary from the noise of the world and a homecoming to the shared presence of Silence.

All are welcome.

If you would like to join or have questions, please email me: reneeeliphd[AT]gmail[DOT]com.

To keep the sanctuary an intimate experience, “seats” are limited. Please email me for the Zoom link.

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Inner-Life Work in the Spirit of Anam Cara

Notes + References

1. Therese Shroeder-Sheker, “Introduction,” in Robert Sardello, Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2008), p. xvi.

2. Ibid., p. xvi.

3. Ibid., p. xvii.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., p. xviii.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., p. xix.

8. Ibid., p. xx.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., p. xxi.

11. Ibid., p. xxii–xxiii.

12. Ibid., p. xxiii.

13. Ibid., p. xxiii.