musings on docility

or a word that doesn't fit my personality at all

She burst into laughter, “Nell, I cannot imagine you on a silent retreat. You? SILENT? No, just no.” The laughter trailed off as I think she covered her phone to tell her kid to get off the top of the climbing tower at the park. “Maybe if it’s a short retreat,” she added, back to the phone, and we finished our conversation as she trailed home, end of summer tastes lingering in the air, the ocean roaring behind her.

She wasn’t wrong. I’m a talker, I always have been. As a girl I’d tell stories to even my dolls long after they’d been asleep. I processed aloud with my mom, my sisters, my friends, all of junior high and high school, even college with my roommates. Early marriage, sometimes I would realize I had talked the ears off my beloved hermit husband and need to call a girlfriend instead to dissect, to explore, to relive whatever the moment of angst or frustration was.

Talking, with moderate listening, made me feel safe. Like I could understand and make sense of a world that makes no sense. Like I was in control.

+ + +

The first silent retreat I took two years ago was glorious. Glorious because I’d finished a 19th annotated Ignatian retreat and could simply receive the bonus graces available at at the end. This was followed up with a second silent retreat later that year. The director was profound. The silence was reverberating. So when I had a chance to go on a silent retreat late this summer, I knew it would be just what the Divine Doctor had ordered.

Silence when you have five loud, lovely children sounds like a great escape, right? A luxury hotel where you can scroll guilt-free, order room service, and sleep 23/7? Sign me up, baby!

But sacred silence is different, or at least we hope it is. The silence of a retreat in a space set aside for prayer and listening is not the vegging out at the solo-vacation. For me, it’s utter presence. I suppose I’m checking-in instead of checking-out.

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Docility is a word I hear and shudder away from. Some dictionaries define it as being easy to control. No, thanks! I’d like to be the one in control, thank you very much! I’d like to make sense of my life through analytical verbal dissection and then tell everyone else what to do and how it should be. For a fourth-born daughter, I’m amazed at my own bossy-ness.

When I prayed at the beginning of 2025 about any Scripture or words to set the tone for the year, docility came to mind. I set it aside. Then I remembered that “receptivity” was my word last year and that being receptive was being open. So I took up docility and tried it on for size. It certainly didn’t fit. I was too big, too in charge, and too loud.

Maybe these are “necessary attributes” in my day-to-day life, but in my spiritually integrated life, I cannot be bossy and an inattentive listener to the Holy Spirit in my “day” life and then a beautifully docile listener in my “prayer” life. I am not living two lives. I am one being. I desire full integration.

What would it look like to be docile and listen in all aspects of my life?

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As I sat in the carpeted, floor-to-ceiling windowed chapel at the retreat center, a few steps away from my private hermitage, I feel docile to His promptings, ready to move where He guides me, not too much in-charge to be a co-listener in the silence. A reboot of docility, a reboot of listening, a reboot of deepening the stillness.

For you, my friend, why do you avoid silence? Is it because you don’t want to be told what to do? I get it. Is it because you feel bored and like nothing is there in the quiet? I get that, too. I mostly have avoided silence in my life because of fear.

If your summer has had no silence on the outside, maybe there is time still for interior listening. Listening to the stillness and the silence and without expectation or fear. Just making some room for the Holy Spirit to start to move and guide.

What do you have to lose? I’m praying for more silence inside! And more docility for all of us!

Love,

Nell

ps. Would HIGHLY recommend stealing away even for one night if you can for some retreat-like silence where you’re checking-in with God instead of just checking-out (as I am prone to do).