First published in the April 2002 magazine but still very relevant.
“Avoid very noisy places and totally silent places”… so reads an article on tinnitus and hearing problems.
And yet for years silence for me has been a natural environment – a bit like putting a fish back in water – and prayer largely silent. If there were times when I found silence difficult I could take comfort in or be inspired by the wisdom of the Bible, of our spiritual writers or of personal friends, especially within a local Julian Meeting.
Recently, however, I have experienced a more intractable problem. The slight hearing loss which began to be apparent in my early forties is worsening and for two or three years I have been increasingly bothered by tinnitus. At first the noise – variously described as ringing, tinkling, roaring, a hissing sound like escaping gas – was not too intrusive and did not greatly affect my times of quiet meditation. But the noise and the deafness are worsening and silence is becoming quite difficult.
When the opportunity came of spending a few days with a small community with a listening ear available, I decided that I wanted to try to address the hearing problems and the increasingly distracted quiet times and try to find some coping mechanisms. Being away from a busy life and staying with very caring people was a good beginning. Someone to talk it over with was a real help and it left me feeling a shift in my position and renewed hope. I could actually do something positive about this. I came away with practical suggestions, for example learning to lip read and with details of a chaplain for deaf people who proved to be a valuable source of suggestions and encouragement and who has supplied literature and addresses.
The breathing space and support of the community left me in a better position to address the problem of the loss of silence in prayer. I realised how thin and short my set-aside prayer time had become since the problem worsened and that l was in fact beginning to avoid much silence. One of the difficulties is that though more apparent at some times than others the tinnitus is always there. I realised I was beginning just to sit and listen to the noise and it did not feel as if much loving attention was going on.
“Quiet time” was becoming an endurance test. Strangely I would have expected the solution to be rather similar to managing a noisy external environment, but I found this approach was no help. The noise was interior and I seemed to have lost the inner silence that can exist regardless of noise outside. It was more akin to managing chronic pain or grief than to managing a noisy environment.
All sorts of difficulties such as health problems or family worries affect our prayer, but for me a significant part of the difficulty of managing tinnitus, which makes it different from life’s other difficulties, is that my own body seemed to be destroying the essence of prayer – silence – and to be in conflict with my deepest desires. And the result was a sense of guilt and frustration. I even wondered if I should give up silent meditation. Was I making an idol of silence? God is not bound by our silence any more than he is defined by our words. Nor are his love and power. Everything changes and our relationships change and hopefully grow so perhaps the quiet times needed to change.
As I thought and prayed about this I became convinced that I needed a different place – not necessarily physically; but if I used my imagination I could perhaps create a place where I could more comfortably meet God – a place where the background noise would mask the distracting racket going on in my head and make it less obvious. I experimented with this over a period of a few weeks. Two environments have been persistently helpful and have remained a resource now that the problem has eased. They had almost a “given” quality. The first was a high waterfall in a tropical setting – very damp, green and bright with colourful birds and a roar in the background which blended with the unwelcome noise, making it almost unnoticeable. As I revisited this place during successive prayer times I noticed that the site was now inhabited by two people standing not far from the falling water. In fact close enough to be getting rather wet from the spray. I could not recognise them. Their features were not discernible and they were rather stylised. One had his arm round the other, inclining his head to try to hear what the other was saying. Intuitively I knew these for Christ – who was the listener – and myself. On further reflection it seemed that in this picture Christ was saying “I will accept your limitations and inhabit your noisy place.”
The second place was on a shingle beach in an English winter where the breaking waves were crashing on the beach, pounding the shingle and sucking the stones backwards as they retreated. There was wind and salt spray. Unlike the first place there was an absence of colour – sea, sky and beach being various shades of grey. Again, after a few visits there, the scene began to be peopled this time with a group of people – either a family group or friends usually walking but not attempting to say much as the wind took their words away. An atmosphere of quiet companionship invariably settled on the group. They have come to symbolise the people who over the years have shared the silent spaces with me and the people who do so still.
As all these things had their good effect and I felt more at ease, I began to resume my normal habit of using relaxation and centring exercises as a way of settling into silence before any words or reading, though giving more time to this than before. Gradually the sense of loss has faded and a feeling of thankfulness is returning and sheer relief. There are good days and bad days. On bad days alternating silence with slow reading helps.
Wakeful nights are rather different. The quiet of the night and the horizontal position seem to make the noise of tinnitus more pronounced. My most useful aid is not vision but touch: a holding cross loosely held in one hand. Holding a cross is also helpful to me in a group meditation if I cannot hear the reading properly and a visual focus is not being used.
The following resources have helped:
People Need stillness by Wanda Nash. DLT, 1992 (there is also a relaxation tape with the same title)
At Ease with Stress by Wanda Nash. DLT, 1988
Prayer in the shadows by Angela Ashwin. Fount, 1990
Some of these may be out of print – copies may be available from:
Abe Books https://www.abebooks.co.uk/
World of Books https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb
Amazon sellers.
RNID Royal National Institute for the Deaf https://rnid.org.uk/information-and-support/tinnitus/
© Gail Ballinger. First published in the April 2002 magazine.
Photo. Not edited.
Jason Rogers, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Comments
If this is a problem that you share we would be interested to hear how you deal with it. In your personal quiet times, or in a group, what helps and what hinders? What resources have you found?
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