Silence
A few times a month I make my way to a small side room in a church that’s not too far from our home. There are chairs set out in a circle there and usually three or four people who have arrived before me. It’s not a large group. As soon as the hands on the clock hit 10:30 an anticipated silence settles over everyone. For the next hour we will sit here quietly, some of us reading things that feed our soul, all of us listening for that still small voice inside. If anyone hears something that they feel would be enriching or nourishing the group, they may share it aloud but many meetings are spent in complete, shared silence.
This is a Quaker meeting. As a mother to two young children, noise is as commonplace in my life as oxygen. Silence on the other hand? That’s something I have to search out, rare as gold. But unlike with gold, there’s something that makes us resist the minute we consider stepping away from the rush and the clamor.
In his book “Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, And Delight in Our Busy Lives”, author Wayne Muller writes, “For some people emptiness can feel fertile and spacious, alive with possibility… But others feel emptiness as an ache, a void; something painful, in need of being filled.”
He goes on to say that, “This is one of our fears of quiet; if we stop and listen we will hear this emptiness. If we worry that we are not good or whole inside, we will be reluctant to stop and rest, afraid we will find... a terrible aching void with nothing to fill it. We will refuse to look up from our work, refuse to stop moving. But this emptiness has nothing at all to do with our value or our worth.”
It’s not easy to find silence in a world that’s become so full of sound that noise pollution is a real thing! National Geographic defines noise pollution as “any unwanted or disturbing sound that affects the health and well-being of humans and other organisms.” It can actually cause noise induced hearing loss (NIHL), high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep disturbance, and stress (NGS, 2019). On the flip side, silence has been found to have many health benefits including boosting the immune system, growing new brain cells, and lowering stress. A 2006 study actually found that two minutes of sitting in silence is more relaxing than listening to music (Kane, 2017)!
Even though practicing silence can feel frightening and unnerving at first, push past that feeling. Stay with it! There is a place on the other side of that fear where the waters of peace run deep. For you, maybe it’s in the morning shower before you’ve been sucked into the rhythm of the day. Or maybe it’s somewhere out in nature where you can sit alone and just feel the sun or the wind. Wherever it is, make a point to seek out silence sometime this week and befriend it.
References:
Kane, S. (2017). The hidden benefits of silence. Psych Central. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-hidden-benefits-of-silence#1.
National Geographic Society. (2019). Noise pollution. National Geographic. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/noise-pollution/.
Challenges/Points:
We live in an increasingly noise filled world. It’s constantly at our fingertips. Podcasts. Playlists. Audiobooks. Videos. Phone calls. Notification sounds. But constant noise is not healthy for any of us.
Pursuing silence can be intimidating and frightening depending on what you believe about the core of who you are. If that’s true for you, let yourself wrestle with that. We can change what we believe about ourselves. In fact that’s a sign of healthy growth.
Questions:
When was the last time you really experienced silence?
What feelings come up for you when you sit in silence for a while?
Where can you fit some silence into your life?
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