A quarter of the way into the new millennium the reality for many people from this community is that their lives and stories are sidelined. Their voices are silenced.
So, although people from the GMH may have a spiritual practice of silence, authors in these communities tend to write more about silencing than silence-based prayer.
So, although people from the GMH may have a spiritual practice of silence, authors in these communities tend to write more about silencing than silence-based prayer.
This new series is a way to bring some voices from the GMH community into the conversations and resources about silence on the Seeds of Silence website.
In memoriam
It is with sadness that we share the news that the well-known contemplative Black theologian, Dr Barbara A. Holmes, passed away in the last couple of weeks.
Dr B, as she was affectionately known, had a powerful voice as a wise elder and will be missed by many across a multitude of communities.
Author of several books, including Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, Barbara offered advice leading to the development of this series.
You can read an Obituary here and view Barbara's teaching, 'Death is not the last word', included in the Centre for Action and Contemplation's Tribute, by clicking here.
Dr B, as she was affectionately known, had a powerful voice as a wise elder and will be missed by many across a multitude of communities.
Author of several books, including Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, Barbara offered advice leading to the development of this series.
You can read an Obituary here and view Barbara's teaching, 'Death is not the last word', included in the Centre for Action and Contemplation's Tribute, by clicking here.
November 2024:
Aizaiah Yong,
'Silence is what calls us back home'
Image: Zachary Young, unsplash.com/@mrtwisty
Silence is what calls us back home
I recently was invited to participate in a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)/GMH (Global Majority Heritage) led contemplative retreat. Though I have been on other contemplative retreats before, something about this experience felt different. There was a genuine sense that those who were there understood the complicated histories between religion, race, colonialism, and the onslaught of daily oppression faced by those from the global majority which largely goes unacknowledged in many contemporary contemplative spaces. There was also a sense that we knew something about a liberation that was spiritually astute, collective, embodied, holistic, and
even celebratory. Something about a liberation that our ancestors have borne witness to even in the face of grave injustice and terror. But it was not just the sense that we felt resonance with one another as people of the global majority who were also drawn to contemplation, but there was a trust present with us that an even deeper communion with one another was available. An intimacy founded beyond any one shared identity (in fact there was a lot of diversity among us), in an experience of silence. A silence that affirms all that the dominant cultures of the world rejects–is beloved.
Silence is not the absence of noise or sound. Though one can be quiet or stop speaking as an act of will, it does not guarantee an experience of the silence that brings peace. There is a silence that comforts and calls us forward to what matters most. This silence can be evidenced in the musician who plays with their whole heart or in the laughter of a child who is in awe of the life around them. Silence, as it grows within me, is an inner posture which invites me to truly listen. And it is in this experience of silence that begets more life.
Silence is an experience universally available to all, with no prerequisites except a courageous heart. A willingness to give oneself more fully over to the love that dwells at the heart of life. And this silence is difficult to access in the grind culture which we have inherited in late stage racialized capitalism, and even frightening or destabilizing to certain aspects of ourselves which seek control and survival. Perhaps that is why there were not many male-identifying people (I was one of four total) at the retreat, because practicing a receptive and spacious orientation towards life has been deemed weak or cowardly. The irony of it all though is that entrusting
oneself more fully to life is an act of tremendous courage.
Silence simplifies our lives and brings us back to what is most essential. Silence is what calls us back home. Silence calls us to return to the knowing that although we have lost a lot (and that loss is very painful), there is that within each of us that can never be lost or destroyed. It calls us to return to the fire that burns and transforms all the resistances and barriers we have put up to protect us but compromise an even deeper and more profound joy. And silence calls us to return to that which sustains us through and through, inviting us to be remade again and again. And it is in that silence, where we experience ourselves as loved, known, and cared for. And so is the entire world, without any exceptions. It is time for us to return home.
Aizaiah Yong, November, 2024.
To read about one of Aizaiah's related books, Multiracial Cosmotheandrism: A Practical Theology of Multiracial Experiences (Orbis Books, 2023), click here.
To read about Aizaiah's upcoming book,Trauma & Renewal: Towards Spiritual, Communal, and Holistic Integration (Orbis books, 2025), with contributions from Amos and Alma Yong, which will be published in May 2025, click here.
* The term 'Global Majority Heritage' (GMH) is increasingly used to refer to people whose backgrounds are from non-Western, non-White ethnic and cultural groups, reflecting the fact that the majority of the world’s population comes from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The term seeks to challenge the traditional framing of racial and ethnic minorities by emphasizing that these populations are, in fact, the global majority.
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