The deconstructive effects of silence/solitude

"When we discover ourselves "hidden with Christ in God," we don't need any kind of self-image at all. I hope this doesn't sound too esoteric, because it isn't; it's what happens in true prayer.
This is what will happen when we expose ourselves to silence and stop exposing ourselves to the judgments of the world; when we stop continuously "picking up" the energy of others; when we stop thinking about what others think of us and what they take us to be. We are who we are in God—no more and no less." ~Richard Rohr

I usually thing of silence as....quiet. There's inner silence, outer silence....there's even a sort of an undertone of silence that can be heard regardless of the noises going on around you. But it's even more than this. Mulholland (Invitation to a Journey) defines silence as "the deep inner reversal of that grasping, controlling mode of being that so characterizes life in our culture...relinquishing to God our control of our relationship with God"(pp 136-137). Nouwen (Way of the Heart) says that silence keeps us from becoming entangled in the world, from extinguishing the inner fire of God's Spirit, and from slipping into the wasteful use of words that is so prevalent in our world.

Solitude has a more outward quality to it. Going to a place apart...alone. But it is even more than this. Both Mulholland and Nouwen look at solitude as an unmasking of sorts. The (sometimes painful) tearing away of the many faces, fluffs and scaffolds wrenched, hammered, and soaked into us by the surrounding culture/society. It is the "furnace of transformation," where all that is not truly me is incinerated, completely demolished. Gee. Sounds like fun.

Silence, Nouwen says, is solitude in action - solitude taken out of a place apart and carried into the daily grind. Silence "completes and intensifies" solitude. So they are inseparably linked. And they work together at the task of creative demolition. What a beautiful mess.