Silence and Boredom

One

Into the Great… Boredom?

In 1984, the German filmmaker, Philip Gröning, contacted a group of Carthusian monks at the Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps.  Gröning wanted to make a documentary about the lives of these monks, living quietly, high up and apart from the rest of civilization. The monks asked for some time to think it over. They took sixteen years! Then they responded to Gröning and said they were willing, if he was still interested. So, in 2005, more than twenty years after the director’s initial request, the movie was released. It was called, Into the Great Silence. 

The movie follows the monks through one year of their lives. And it is two hours and forty-five minutes of silence. 

After the first five minutes, I felt like rushing out of the theater screaming. But I was trapped in the middle of a row. So I waited. I endured. And then something magical happened. I was completely captivated. And so was the entire theater full of people. And when it ended. No one wanted to leave. And no one wanted to speak.

How can this be true? Usually, we get bored with silence. What happened?

Two

Boredom

To understand what happened during two hours and forty-five minutes of silence, we need to understand what boredom really is. 

Boredom, of course, is the displeasure we experience when we’re confronted with something we’re not interested in. But there are two reasons why we’re not interested in something. There are two kinds of things that make us bored. The first is when some subject matter is too remedial for us. It’s when something is beneath our level of intellectual competency. So, like when parents have to read Go, Dog, Go! or Green Eggs and Ham a million times to their kids, they are allowed to get bored. Because that book was below their reading level to begin with, and it’s just getting more painful with every rereading. 

But we also get bored when something is too advanced for us, when it’s above our competency level. The same adult who yawns at Green Eggs and Ham would probably yawn at a nuclear physics conference – not because the subject matter is too low for them, but precisely because it’s too high and too deep for their comprehension. 

And that’s why we worldly people find silence boring. Not because it offers us superficial, easy subject matter, but because it offers us the supremely lofty and profound truths, and boredom is our attempt to flee from the challenge.

Three

Engaging the Lofty and the Profound

Silence is the place for considering the highest of all truths, the truths about God. It’s where we listen for the still, small voice Elijah heard on the mountain. It’s where we try to understand the God who hides Himself, the God who is purely spiritual, and can only be found by raising the mind beyond what can be seen and what can be heard. And silence is the place for considering the most profound of all truths, the truth about ourselves.

Only in silence can we really examine our consciences, find the hidden motives that govern our lives, and look for strategies to free ourselves from those secret, cruel, and unworthy desires and addictions that have become our masters without us even knowing it.

So the only two things ultimately worth knowing: the truth about God, and the truth about ourselves, these two realities can only be known in silence. But it’s really advanced subject matter. And we can only enter into that truth if we continuously resist the boredom that wants to pull us back into more familiar, more superficial things. 

Four

Boredom and Acedia

The boredom we experience in the midst of silence has a very technical theological name. It’s called sloth. That’s right, the deadly sin of sloth, and it means a disinterest and a displeasure with spiritual and interior things. It’s sometimes translated as “sloth,” but it’s not laziness the way we typically think about it. On the contrary, it’s the hyperactivity of a mind trying to get away from deep and lofty things, back towards familiar and distracting things. It’s the host of distractions that assaults us whenever we try to pray or really reflect. Pulling us back towards the familiar and mundane: pictures, stories, politics, projects, and practical anxieties. 

So boredom isn’t so much a weariness or a fatigue, it’s actually a powerful pull, a scramble to get you away from the foreign depths of silence. Which means if you want to live a truly spiritual, Christian, and self-reflective life, you’re going to have to fight back. You’re going to have to resist boredom and enter more deeply into silence.

Five

Increasing the Silence in Your Life

The movie about the Carthusian monks at Chartreuse is called “Into the Great Silence.” But it might just has easily have been called, “Into the silence of greatness.” Because only in silence do we draw closer to the greatness of God. Only in silence do we come to know our souls better and gain the insight and strength to pursue greatness of spirit. 

So start adding more silence to your life. Add time of quiet prayer in the morning and night. Get to mass a little early, and stay a little afterwards, and pray in silence. Especially in the basic tasks you need to perform. When you do dishes, when you do laundry, mowing the lawn, going somewhere in the car, whenever there’s a chance for greater silence, take the opportunity. 

It’ll feel boring, that’s fine. That’s just the normal struggle towards what is lofty and profound. But it’s a struggle worth fighting, and worth winning.