John Piippo

Chair, on the river in my backyard

I spend a lot of time meeting with God, and being inwardly silent and still. Be still, and know God - right?

In our noisy world, silence is not valued as much as the noise. Yet for me, silence has become my secret weapon. Because I have learned, over decades, to practice silence.

Silence is essential to music. In a musical score, every rest is a soundless moment that gives shape to, and makes sense of, the notes. Without musical stops and pauses and rests, music would be constant noise, without meaning. Constant noise is meaninglessness. Constant noise is sometimes employed to torture prisoners.

When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

Revelation 8:1

I would like to experience such absolute, pure soundlessness. It is a prophetic indicator. Something, Someone, is coming. This is a silence filled with expectation and trembling. This silence will focus us, and allow us to see. God-filled silence produces clarity.

Extended times of silence empower us to collect the chaos of our thoughts and shape them into a coherent life. Silence takes us away, so that we can return, better than we were before. Silence shuts our ears, so that we might hear.

Wisdom is impossible without silence.

If you do not practice silence as a spiritual discipline you are missing Someone. Without silence, you won't understand the music. Silence is the music. Without silence, we won't hear.

Paul Tournier wrote:

"Modern people lack silence. They no longer lead their own lives; they are dragged along by events. It is a race against the clock. I think that what so many people come to see me for is to find a quiet, peaceful person who knows how to listen and who isn't thinking all the time about what he has to do next. If your life is chock-full already, there won't be any room for anything else. Even God can't get anything else in. So it becomes essential to cut something out." (In Spiritual Classics, Richard Foster and Emilie Griffin, eds., pp. 160-161)

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My first book is Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

Book #2 - Leading the Presence-Driven Church.

I'll send my next book to a publisher for review in mid-August - Deconstructing Progressive Christianity.

After I die, should someone pick up my copy of Through the Year With Thomas Merton, they would conclude, "He read it. And read through it again and again." Because the book has fallen apart!

I read Merton because he had this deep, thick, massive praying life. Over many years. It was constant, never yielding to the growing media circus of our shallow culture. In praying, he met God, and was led to the wellspring of life.

August 28, 1990. That's the date I inscribed inside the book jacket. It became one of my companions in life, along with the Bible, Henri Nouwen, Eugene Peterson, and other writers who know prayer from the inside. They... actually... got alone with God... and prayed. This is real praying.

Real praying knows from the inside, from much personal experience. Merton heard the voice of God and matured in discernment. Only the experienced discern. You don't believe in prayer if you don't have a praying life.

When I read the Scriptures I not only study them but am studied by them. When this happens, I pray the Scriptures. Because in them I am confronted by the One who is beyond me yet comes to me.

In and through the Bible I am consistently known. And then, on rare occasions, someone who knows praying greater and longer and higher and deeper than I comes to meet me through a book. Like Merton. And I find myself drawn to praying through the book.

This life-of-praying thing is an inside job, available to all who grow weary of the world's pseudo-sophia and want more.

Saturday, July 24, 2021

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Saturday, July 17, 2021