11. Silence

I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes. –Job 3:26

Pure silence can be quite earsplitting. In our crowed world, I am not sure many of us will ever get to experience absolute silence ever again.

Walking through a deep forest shortly after a heavy snow, it is possible to lose yourself in the absence of sound. With three senses disabled, there is less to distract you. Given the reduction in stimuli, what fills the balance? Is it the Holy Spirit; and before I know it, I am communing… am in communion… with nature.

It is so difficult to find such silence in places other than nature. Can you find it in a shopping mall, a classroom, or a restaurant? And yet you experience communion in places other than a snowy wood. Maybe the capacity to commune has more to do with finding a silence within myself.

A mentor of mine once observed that the word "silent" and the word "listen" are comprised of the same letters. "In order to do the one," he said, "…you must first learn to do the other, and to listen, you must be intentional about it." There are very few times when real life will yield to the possibilities of silence, or where the absence of anything, sound included, is valued.

The value of being able to conjure inner silence, however, is inestimable. It takes the place of the deep snowy wood at those times when going into the wild is not possible. Finding the silence inside requires effort we’re not used to extending, for in committing to such an undertaking, I commit to leaving, even temporarily, worlds in which I have grown comfortable, worlds that have rewarded my tolerance of the cacophony associated with it all, worlds where I am leaving something, everything, on a quest for an absence, rather than a presence.

See how nature- trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the start, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls.
–Mother Teresa of Calcutta

How kind of daily effort can you devote to finding or creating the silence to hear what is most important to you?