You took the words right out of my mouth. And off my screen, and off my phone..

Andy Flannagan

For 48 hours on 25th/26th November, CSM Director Andy Flannagan went silent. No talking, no texting, no emailing, no internet, no skyping, no tweeting. Semaphore and morse code were allowed however! He was raising money for the Christian Socialist Movement - in his words, "to stay silent, so that on return we can speak louder in the public square, speaking up for those who cannot speak for themselves..."

So that was interesting. I am genuinely thinking more slowly. I am genuinely walking more slowly. I am genuinely trying to listen out for the still, small voice, rather than fill the air with my words, even if they are praying words.

It is so hard to be still. Even when I got to the stage of stopping my intentional verbal or silent communication to God, (which was some effort), there was another obstacle. I suspect you are probably like me, in that whenever you do try to be silent and still, your head just fills with all the thoughts that are competing for your attention. Jobs undone, problems unsolved, plans to be made. I started thinking, "Am I just being unrealistic in my expectations of some monkish meditative state?" Well, was I? On reflection, no. My inability to be still is definitely nurture, not nature. We are wired to functionality. Cramming in another phone call or email into a journey, watching TV while eating, texting while in company. These are all symptoms of a mindset where we feel useless or worthless unless we are achieving something. Being still and silent freaks this part of us out. We are confronted with the awkward question - "Well if I'm not here to be useful, what am I here for?" That is a question that we would often rather leave to the side, as it may have implications if we answer it.

Many great pray-ers and philosophers before me have written about silence, and my relatively recent thoughts won't touch their eloquence. The most profound I can get is to suggest the following. Silence reminds us who we are. It reminds us how helpless we are. It destroys the myth that the world needs us, and perhaps more importantly asks us to what extent we need the world. It exposes if we are living, or just existing. It exposes if we are happy or sad. It strips away all of the scenery and props on the stage that we use to perform for everyone else. God cannot be fooled. But I have discovered a beautiful thing. I have discovered that even though I am sitting on the stage in silence, my God is standing to applaud me in the 5th row of the theatre. I want him to be impressed by my performance, but it is starting to become clear that he is simply impressed with me. And that is helping me to relax. A lot. In fact I read recently that some of the most successful CEOs in the world attribute their success to the one hour per day where they shut themselves in a room and just think.

The comedy highlights of the 48 hours included ordering an eggnog latte through the medium of frantic gesticulation (or more accurately a process of elimination) and getting through Parliament's understandably suspicious security!

I stopped and prayed before typing this next paragraph. I know the chances are I will revert to my old ways, but I want to try to dig into this while I can. Most notable during my 48 hours silent and offline was how often I lurched either physically or mentally towards turning on the TV, checking my email, or going to click on the BBC news website. Only through the denial of these things did I realise exactly how often I do them, and how much I desire them. It's not like I hadn't recognised that this was sorely true in the past, but just not to the extent that became clear. What is it in us that drives us towards the superficial and the immediate, preventing us attending to what is deeper and eternal? I love the BBC website, but what has convinced me that it is so important for me to know exactly what is going on all over the world at any given moment? I'd love to think that it's because I can immediately pray for various people and situations, but I know that's not true.

For me, it's often simply that difficult choices or realities lie in wait when I exercise my creativity. Someone will critique me, so it's much easier to stay safe as a consumer, where I can't be critiqued. Learning more about real people's personal realities may require sacrifice and time, which our celebrity friends will never demand of us. These celebrity friends may be X factor contestants or celebrities in the middle-class soap opera of politics, where we allow ourselves to be reduced to the role of pundits, and maybe even voters, if we can be bothered.

These friends can be switched off after they have stimulated us enough, allowing us to paper over our loneliness and lack of deep relationships. These friends are also better looking, and wittier than our actual neighbours.

What does it say about a country when we could all answer more trivia questions about Cheryl Cole than the people who live next door?

We flit from one church to another, one author to another, from one set of friends to another, searching for some keys to truly experiencing God. We have become spiritual tourists, exploring the shallows, then moving on to the next destination, ticking the next box on our "seen that, prayed that, bought the t-shirt" list.

There's no way that any of us can experience everything there is to experience of travelling the whole world. You could keep going till you have lived a thousand years and still not have seen everything on this incredible planet. Why do we even try?

My time silent has called me to get out of the shallows and simply go deeper, in the place where I live, with the people I know, and the God who is dying to speak to me, if only I would listen. Please pray that I won't be distracted by the easy lure of new shallow places.

Ssshh! Let's go deeper.