Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence, London: Granta Books (2009),

Paperback, 320 pages.

$40.50 (AUD) approx from emporiumbooks.com.au

Reviewed by Ted Witham

Review published in Eureka Street.

Being a Christian is more about emptying oneself and opening the self to God than it is about fulfilling the self.  Silence, according to Sara Maitland's fascinating book, reveals this truth starkly.

Sara Maitland feels compelled to live in greater silence, and this book details her journey to learn what silence is through reading about it and experiencing it in different settings.  Her reading covers not only traditional Christian accounts of silence, but also the secular accounts of extreme isolation and silence, for example, Richard Byrd alone in a tent in the Arctic winter, or Alexander Selkirk frantically building fences on his desert island.

Maitland’s overview of the Christian desert tradition and the traditions of silence in Buddhism is comprehensive, and sometimes wry.  Why did the wily Bishop Athanasius put so many words into the mouth of the nearly always silent Anthony in writing his history of the hermit?  Answer: because Athanasius needed a mouthpiece for orthodoxy, and he pressed even those who didn't talk into service.

Maitland feels that our culture devalues silence.  Our individualism and consumerist need to fulfil ourselves has crowded silence out.  So resistance of friends to her plans has itself to be resisted with deeper understanding and the careful explanations in this book.

Maitland worries that we no longer respond to appalling tragedy with silence.  We chatter and make busy work when loved ones die. We even applaud in funerals. 

She spends six weeks on Skye, a bleak island off the Scottish coast, noting the principal experiences that silence brings: greater intensity of seeing, hearing, smelling; a breaking down of the boundaries of the self; a joy she names “jouissance "; and hearing sounds and voices.

Maitland then travels to Israel for a desert experience of silence, where she discovers the lassitude and undoing of a sense of time, both of which open her out to an experience of God.

Her third planned experience of silence was in the high country near her childhood home in southwest Scotland.  These walks give Sara Maitland a different experience of solitude, because high country below the snow-line is noisy and stimulates clear memories, which she polishes into anecdotes.  This experience of silence actually reinforces the sense of ego.

She reflects on these two contrasting experiences: the desert silence helps her to pray; the mountain solitude helps her to put experience into words.  The latter "silence" is the solitude the artist claims, especially since the Romantic poets gave us the image of the artist as a hero journeying into the self to bring out new creations for the reader or viewer.

Maitland knows she needs these two silences – the desert and the mountain – to fulfil her twin callings to pray and to write. She wonders whether they are compatible with each other.  Can she have both, or must she relinquish one or the other?

She buys and rebuilds an isolated shepherd's hut, again in southwest Scotland, to learn how to find both silence and solitude for both prayer and writing. 

The contrast Maitland draws between emptying self, the classic Christian goal, and fulfilling the self, the modern Enlightenment project, is provocative. 

If silence opens us more fully to the Other then it entails a necessary breaking down of the boundaries of the self. This is one of the problems that Maitland says our modern society has with silence: it fears the disintegration of the self. Maitland argues persuasively that holding on to tightly to the self is madness, because it prevents us from being accessible to God.

Like Maitland, this reviewer feels a vocation to write.  Since retirement, and through my deeper immersion in the Franciscan Third Order, I am also rediscovering my vocation to pray.  Sara Maitland's book, and the prism of silence she explores, prod me deeper into prayer and more thoughtfully, less frenetically, into writing.

I do rejoice in our nearly 28 years of marriage, and am also bemused about how much marriage still has to teach me.

I have been noticing my own irritation recently when Rae uses my things. Last week I commented on her failure to put away my nail clippers. I made a sarcastic remark about hiding the toothpaste we use (it was only a few centimetres away from the tray it was supposed to be in.) What is more, I struggle to hide my discomfort at the cavalier way Rae squeezes from the middle, as if it just didn’t matter.

To my surprise, after nearly 28 years I’m actually asking myself, ‘does it matter?’ Why do I feel disquiet about sharing our toothpaste and nail clippers? When I’ve interrogated myself on this in the past, I have put it down to my childhood.

When I was 8, it did matter that I squeezed the toothpaste from the bottom because it upset Dad. His efforts to liberate every ounce of toothpaste from the tube were intense. Being economical with the toothpaste was good practice for being economical with everything else.

So now when I see the evidence of squeezing in any other part of the tube than at the bottom, I hear Dad’s outraged voice from the bathroom, ‘Who left the toothpaste like this?’ and I cringe and mentally hide in the woodbox. Then I feel the outrage within myself and I want to know who could be so wasteful. But I know I should resist the desire to take my outrage out on Rae. My Dad’s economy drives belonged to another time and another place.

So my childhood distress at being caught with the wrongly squeezed toothpaste is part of my problem with Rae; or more accurately, Rae’s problem with me. To solve it I must recognise the origin of my strong feelings of irritation and to remind myself that they are part of my relationship with Dad and should not intrude into my relationship with Rae.

But my unwillingness to share comes from somewhere other than my family of origin. After all, our family shared everything. There was one hairbrush, one comb, one tube of toothpaste and one soap for the five of us children. My reluctance in sharing is more likely to be a product of my five years as a boarder at secondary school.

Our boarding house allowed us two small spaces for our belongings: a locker next to our bed, and another in the student common room. Our possessions were sacrosanct. To lend another boy the key to your locker so he could borrow a book or take a biscuit was an act of high trust. (One of the reasons I trusted so few to go to my locker was my fear that they would inadvertently lead a prefect or master to find my cache of cigarettes!)

Our personal space consisted of just the tiny area occupied by our bed and locker. Every other square metre of our lives was shared with 70 other boys. In these conditions, touching another student’s possessions was a violation; a greater violation than touching another student’s person. One could tolerate a boy draping his arm around your shoulder more easily than allowing that boy to borrow your toothpaste.

Which brings me back to Rae and me. When she squeezes the toothpaste from the middle, not only do I experience the outrage at her failure of economy, but also I remember my fury at finding that someone had touched my possessions at boarding school.

Even though I am now experiencing only the echo of those powerful emotions, that outrage and that fury still have power over me. They become a barrier to our closeness.

It’s high time I dropped them and actually acted on my belief that marriage makes us two persons into one person.  In my head, I know that Rae borrowing my nail-clippers or anything else from ‘my’ toilette is not something that should concern me. What is mine is hers. Or after 28 years, what is ours is ours. What is not ours I should leave back in the past where it belongs.

I do love libraries. Of course, I love all libraries, because they are full of books, and books feed me. I love the smell and texture of books. But I’m thinking particularly of public libraries. What wonderful libraries they are!

Public libraries enable the rich works of authors to circulate through a community. They allow everyone to read Wilbur Smith or Maeve Binchy. They show off Charles Dickens and John Updike. A democracy prevails: Macbeth has equal billing with the latest bodice-ripper from Mills & Boone. Yet in this democracy there is a subtle hierarchy. Mills & Boone are on the magazine stand classified as fiction; Shakespeare sits in a solemn section of dramatic works.

Public libraries are information services. There are books and videos (and increasingly DVDs) on every possible subject. These are arranged from 1 – 999 in Mr Dewey’s remarkable classifications, which in itself is an education into human knowledge. While Dewey numbers and the books themselves are articulate, so are the librarians. Part of their commitment is to find information for you, and in my experience, they are unfailingly helpful, whether your query is whimsical and transient, or serious research which you will use for the benefit of all humanity.

I love libraries because they are connected. I can request books from other libraries. When I go to my quaint local library, I am conscious that it is but a portal to thousands of other libraries, and if I wish, just by going to my local library, I can borrow books from almost any public library in the State, from the State library itself, and even from private libraries, University libraries or libraries in other parts.

So this year, I have borrowed a new novel from Sydney University library, an old text on writing from the Battye Library, and books on pain and spirituality from other municipal libraries around this State; not to mention a score of books from the other libraries in this City of Melville.

Stepping into the Willagee Public Library is like stepping into the foyer of a teleporting service.

These words circulating through the community make a difference to the community. They add to the sum of knowledge of this particular community. They make it more and more likely that this particular community will act in a humane way, because of its exposure to the whole of human self-expression. It means of course that this community can participate more fully in the democracy of our State and Federation, and this, at times, can be a controversial “holding”.

In these years, the Liberal Party is in power in Canberra, and there is a strong Liberal party penetration of local government. There are some Liberals with such a strong individualistic ideology that sees knowledge and education as the possession of an individual and not a common good.

It is this ideology that is demanding that the user pays at Public Libraries. I was saddened when we lived in Parkwood that the Canning Council had allowed that expression of economic rationalism into its libraries, with fines for late returns, and hire rates for some new books. There was talk of charging for membership, and outrage was expressed that the totality of rate-payers had to fund the literary “hobbies” of a minority.

I am pleased that this City of Melville has not sullied its libraries with a “user pays” philosophy, despite the very public Liberal partisanship of the Mayor. Long may the current system reign!

It seems, though, that we must continue to argue that the marvelous system we have is a public good. Ratepayers contribute to its upkeep and to the purchase of new library items because they all benefit from the knowledge circulating through the community.

The comparison is the road system, most of which is maintained by the City. There are roads in the City which I never use, and I am never likely to use, but I still pay equally to their upkeep, because they form part of a network of roads from which I benefit every day.

It is a ludicrous to turn local roads into toll roads as it is to start charging individuals for the use of the common library. I accept that if I use the library, then I am committed in some way to the common good. I am glad to make that commitment, necause it reciprocates the commitment the City is making to me through continbuing to provide this wonderful service that enables us to explore the brains of our fellow-human beings untrammeled by time and space.

I do love Public Libraries.
 

© Ted Witham 2005
Spirit-Ed: Consultant in Religious Education
Website: www.spirit-ed.com.au
Email: ted@spirit-ed.com.au

Today’s issue of The Revealer led me to the blog of a Canadian liberal Christian, Bene Diction, who was reflecting on the Christian Bloggers Conference he attended in Los Angeles. Bene (not his real name) reflects on the session he attended and the importance his fellow bloggers gave to marketing and web-presence.

I do the minimum marketing for this blog. I am assuming that when I build up a list of subscribers for my newsletter, my new website (spirit-ed.com.au) will attract visitors, some of who will find their way to this blog. But I am not yet serious about marketing.

So why do I blog? This blog is certainly more than a private journal. There is a contradiction in putting a private journal on the web, even without marketing. Effectively what I do is like leaving my work lying open on a seat in a train-station on today’s entry… behaviour unsuited to private writing.

I know it’s not a private journal. It is not a place where I process private thoughts and feelings. Three days ago, I was reflecting on a relationship from my time in theological college. I am not ashamed of this relationship, but the lessons I learned from it, I realised, are personal. I need to put a boundary around this kind of private information. In thinking this through, I realised that I had already made the decision that this blog is public. Some information is private and therefore not for the blog.

The on-line writers’ list motivated me to start a blog. When a book is published, your blog, if it’s widely read, can be a ready made space for publicity. Once the readers of your book become readers of your blog, then you can inform them about your current writing projects, or direct them to information that would extend their experience of reading your book.

That’s my motivation. But I’ve not yet had my new book accepted, and I won’t start developing readers of my blog until my web page goes live (hopefully this week). I have really thought it important, however, to get started on the web log.

For one, I need to familiarise myself with the technology. I’m still learning how to manage this page. Since I’ve started, I’ve learned how to have standard information on each day’s entry; I’ve added a copyright sign to protect my writing; I’ve signed up with a few blog-lists so that I can legitimately ping them. And I understand about 60% of what I am doing.

I hope to learn new things like how to ping Godblog lists; how to automatically format the standard information after each day’s entry; and I hope to learn things that I don’t yet know I don’t know.

Secondly, the blog is a good warm-up exercise for writing during the day. I write the blog when I first sit down with my lap-top on my knee so that I can prime the river of words. It’s helpful to know that someone may come across this page: it makes me conscious of what I need to do to communicate.

The disadvantage with the blog is that my concept of its audience is vague. At the moment, I guess that my reader is interested in the same things as me. As these are somewhat intellectual pursuits, I don’t need to talk down to this audience. I can take it into my confidence as having a reasonable standard of education.

This discipline of beginning the writing day with a blog works well in stimulating the juices.  I write the blog and then do one edit for practise, and also to polish it sufficiently for public gaze.

But at the end, like every writer, I long for an audience, and know that an audience won’t come without hard work. Blogging is part of that work.

© Ted Witham 2005
Spirit-Ed: Consultant in Religious Education
Website: www.spirit-ed.com.au
Email: ted@spirit-ed.com.au