Suppers of silence

“Shocking, surprising, magic”: some of the adjectives used by fifty Parisian senior executives to describe the experience of the “Suppers of silence”, an initiative promoted with great success by the Collège des Bernardins which invited them to share a “meditative” meal with eight contemplative Carmelites. It was an opportunity to look into their own heart and meditate on their own life and on God. News of the initiative is given by Claire Lesegretain in the French Catholic daily “La Croix”. Spiritual experience which fosters self-discovery. The first such supper was held one evening in January, the second a few days ago, the next, announces Constance de Ferrière, coordinator of the initiative, has been scheduled for the end of September. The idea is the brainchild of two Christian producers: Édouard de Vessine, who calls himself “a practicing believer after having rediscovered practice after a lapse of 40 years”, and Thierry Bizot, whose testimony of conversion inspired the film “Qui a envie d’être aimé?”. “We wish to create – explains de Vessine – a mini event sufficiently intriguing and original to attract high-powered business executives who would never spontaneously come to a Church-run institution”. The guests are welcomed at eight in the evening by Michel de Virville, co-director of the Collège (Catholic centre of research and debate on Church and society) and former Renault manager, who sums up the sense of the initiative as follows: “Silence is not only being mute; it’s also a spiritual experience that places us in dialogue with ourselves”. Father Antoine Guggenheim, research director at the Collège, then enters the underground canteen, under the gothic vaults of the college, and invites meditation: “Silence is beneficial; it permits us to gain access to a dimension of our own being that brings joy and peace”. Against the end of wall of the canteen is a statue of Christ deposed: “the master of the house”, as Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger had called it. The guests then take their place at table, sitting side by side with eight Carmelite monks of the convent of Montmartre in their dark brown habits. The musical notes of a meditative adagio by Estonian composer Arvo Part are thrice played, after the readings chosen to accompany each supper, “to immerse ourselves gently in silence”.Rediscovering the value of time and gestures. Saint Paul’s hymn to charity is listened to and, observes Lesegretain, “we are surprised to find the time to taste the food we are eating. Each mouthful, each gesture assumes importance”, while an atmosphere of happy togetherness and “a kind of complicity with the person sitting in front of one is created; some look upwards into the gothic vaults, others look inwards, into their own heart. Thoughts are assuaged; faces begin to relax, to lose their tension”. Then a passage of Madeleine Delbrêle on silence and another of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are listened to. These are “threshold texts – explains de Virville – that are able to have an impact on those who don’t share our faith”. In Father Guggenheim’s view this choice of texts “is the most difficult aspect”. The Gospel passage chosen for the first evening, “No one can serve two masters, God and Mammon”, was considered “courageous” by these men and women conscious of being financially privileged. To limit distractions, trays are served to be shared between four guests at table: “between six or eight as on the first occasion created too much disorder” says Constance de Ferrière. The readings leave a profound impression, observes Lesegretain; the guests “feel almost disappointed” when, after fifty minutes, the invitation comes from de Virville to break silence and to ascend to the upper floor for the dessert course”.Return to what’s essential. After this parenthesis of “inwardness that restores what is essential”, the moment of the sharing of impressions comes. Antoine, financial executive who has come for the first time, says he felt himself “free, without the obligation of having to have the first and last word as during dinners in the city”. Sylvie, dynamic headhunter and attending a “supper of silence” for the second time, confides that, after the first such supper, she had enrolled in a monastery for a retreat and “gained a taste for collective silence”. Philippe, real estate agent, spontaneously relived his own conversion, twenty years ago, on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. As for frère Dominique, sixty years old, who is accustomed to contemplation, he expresses some surprise that he “had prayed better during this shared meal than during my daily prayer hour alone”.