R. Jared Staudt: In silence, find the peace you’re seeking

“Cultivating this disposition of being able to enter into silence and to sit with the Lord can be absolutely central for growing in the spiritual life,” said R. Jared Staudt, Ph.D. “It's necessary to be very deliberate, to put up a fence...I want to really have peace of mind, I want to have peace of soul. I want my family to have peace in the home. So, we are going to foster that and protect it and guard it from these outside influences. So, that's the phone and any other devices...[to say] we're going to have a time when all these devices are turned off. And, as a family, we're going to foster silence. Not just me, individually, but I'm going to help my kids to develop this. We're going to get it out of the bedroom so my wife and I can actually see each other, talk to each other, grow in our relationship. Because there's a lot of couples — you see these stereotypical images, but it's true — of a couple sitting next to each other and they're both just on their devices.”

See Staudt's article, "Learn to do nothing" at the Denver Catholic, which also appeared as “Learning to do nothing: the art of sacred silence” in The Catholic World Report. Staudt is director of content for Exodus 90 and an author, most recently of “How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization" (TAN Books). Learn more at his website, Building Catholic Culture.