The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on January 24, 2024 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
In many communities where periods of silent sitting are regularly practiced, a short period of walking is included between longer sitting sessions. Practitioners often note that after walking, the stillness of the sit feels accentuated. We are more present to the stillness after having just moved around. In this way, sets of opposites teach us prayer.
Similarly, there is a tension of opposites in the use of sound and silence. Many musicians relish the intensity of a “rest” beat in the middle of an intense piece. Conversely, the repetitive sound of chant right before the silence in a sit often seems to carve open, deeper and wider, our interior space, allowing for the sound of silence to echo more profoundly as we tend to the quiet. Just as we come to know better what hot is after experiencing cold, the tensions of the opposites of sound and silence, stillness and movement, also form us in prayer.
The tensions of opposites in prayer point us toward wholeness. We come to recognize our brokenness as we do the work of healing. When we experience emptiness, we long for fullness. As we allow ourselves to stretch further out on the edges of opposition, we open up to transformation.
Thank goodness for sound and silence, stillness and movement in our prayer, as these are the ritual anchors that ground us in the transformative work of the Spirit, in whom all opposition is both held and also reconciled!
