And to me, it's really interesting to, how do I say, factor in silence in life. One of the things I do is all my counseling sessions, I just had one now, and retreats that I give in classes and so on, talks, I always begin with a little moment of silence. Telephone, when I...
If I know the person, can we have a moment of silence together? Yeah, sure, Dr. Rossi. My daughter, who has three teenagers, happily married, I called her a while ago. Sweetheart, can we have a little minute of silence?
Sure, Dad. She called back a few weeks later. Dad, I have a request.
Can we have a moment of silence together so there's a certain sense in which it passes on? So, I'll, so... You know, I could talk forever about silence. My daughter says to me, Dad, you can talk a lot about silence, meaning you may not do it so much, but you can talk a good line.
But silence, stillness, I read a great quote by Huxley yesterday. Music, second only to silence, music is the language of God, but second only to silence. So, it is in silence, for me, for those I read, Father Hopko, that silence, Quakerism, is pivotal.
I'll stop with that. Do you want to say anything more about silence? Do I want to talk forever about silence? Maybe a bird's eye view, say, maybe if I was a first-year seminarian.
and came to talk to you about kind of spiritual growth, and what might you tell me about silence? Well, it's a really good question, and of course, that's my job. And I don't seek anybody to counsel. I don't have a little list at your turn.
They always, Dr. Rossi, do you have some time that I can talk to you? Yeah, yeah. So we'll talk, blah, blah, blah.
And then I will say, might I ask you about your prayer life? They'll say to me, I'm doing this and this and this. Fine. I'm not your spiritual father and I don't want to be.
But I would. So I preface it by saying Father Hopko on the Internet has 55 maxims. I knew him as a friend quite closely. And he wrote those for himself and then shared them as these are maxims that might help you somebody. One of his maxims is.
Every Christian, Orthodox and non, must meditate 20 to 30 minutes a day, meaning be silent. So I sometimes say that to a seminary, sometimes they're very busy and they don't have 20 to 30 minutes, matins, vespers, and so on every day. But I will say to them, okay, okay, okay, I'd ask you if you could to try, to do five minutes of silent meditation every day. Dr. Rossi, what's meditation mean?
It's not rocket science. You sit in a chair, get very comfortable, be aware of your breathing, and to the rhythm of your breath, say some repetitive prayer, perhaps the Jesus prayer on the inhale. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God.
And on the exhale, have mercy on me, a sinner. Calmly, serenely, repetitively. Then when the timer goes off, it's over.
Don't assess it. Don't say to yourself, today was better than yesterday, or it was good or it was bad. None of that. And expectations play a big part mentally in all of our life, whatever we do.
So by way of expectation, to the extent that you can, don't have expectations for meditation. Because no matter how long you do it, 5 minutes or 20, I'm old, I live alone, but I do my 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night. Guaranteed, anyone who tries silence will, and aside, St. John Chrysostom says, if you decide to pray, or pray more or pray better, You rouse the snake within you. There's a dormant snake inside that is dormant if we're just la la la.
But if we're trying to get closer to God, that snake gets aroused and is lethal. And St. John Chrysostom continues, and if you continue to pray, this is a lovely phraseology, if you continue to pray, you lay the snake low. So the expectation is, I'm going to set my little timer and meditate as best I can, not think my thoughts, but...
give my awareness to God as best I can. But I expect distractions and I can expect what I want to get distracted. And I'm going to get tempted.
And in my own case, most of my most severe temptations, I call them savage, are when I'm meditating. And all one does is one doesn't fight them or ponder them or even label them good or bad. Distractions can be good or bad.
Just come back to the prayer and continue doing. And the theology is that that time, as according to Metropolitan Calisto's ware, is transformative. It actually permanently changes the spinal cord of my character, the spinal cord of my soul, my noose.
How that happens, we don't know. We don't measure it. Is it happening? None of that.
But... something really deep. So we become more ourselves. I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me. And we become more centered, more whatever, serene, calm, joyful.
It all happens in silence. Now there's a difference between silence and stillness. I don't claim that I...
ever have much stillness because my head is a whirlwind but silence i can choose and do and i can know that to the extent that i choose to do that i'm going to rouse all the powers of hell against me father schmemann used to say often to seminarians satan is real he's not down in forty-second street with the pimps and the prostitutes he's got them he's up here trying to get us by the throat So, I expect major temptations a lot here at St. Phelps. And they happen because I talk to the students and they're just always tempted one way or another, this or that. So, that's what I would say about silence.