Where is Your Silence These Days?
“Silence is an endangered species,” says Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist who traveled the world for over 25 years to find and record places completely free from manufactured noise.
When possible, and it is not always possible, I have begun to wake early to hear silence. To sit with the world before all the buttons and beams are pressed on, and it is undoubtedly my favorite time of day. There is a special silence at dawn that my mind and my body appreciate.
Interestingly, and for the promotion of their new book on how golden silence is, Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz share in Time Magazine, 2022:
In 1859, reflecting on her experiences with patients in a hospital during the Crimean War, the legendary British nurse and public health innovator Florence Nightingale wrote that: “Unnecessary noise, then, is the most cruel absence of care which can be inflicted either on sick or well.” The latest research demonstrates that she had an essential point.
In the genesis of the podcast era, On Being, was my favorite. I felt like I could drop into a wisdom class from anywhere, and I remember the first time Gordon Hempton talked about the decreasing parts of the world where there is not noise, I suppose we could say now, where there is not internet, where a busy and muddled imprint is not grabbing for the pristine. But what to make of it?
How many of you grab your phone on a TV commercial, which used to be the time to scurry to the bathroom, get a snack or talk to the person next to you? How many of us stop the scroll to close our eyes, so there is but one glimpse of silence before the blue light shuts off? How many of us sit in silence and feel at ease?
I have been watching a series called The Chosen, for years now, and it seems to be reaching a tipping point in popularity. As a born and raised Catholic, the show is proving quite revolutionary to me as, for me, it presents a very real, humbling and human interpretation of the Christ. One that I found in Rudolph Steiner’s writings, first. One that had doubts and frustrations. In one episode, the Christ talks about the frustration of telling the disciples what is about to happen, but because of the “very human need to not hear” what they don’t want to hear, no one is listening. No one can hear me.
So it seems listening has been a human dilemma for awhile.
I paraphrase with the intention of sharing the all too common feeling of being, unheard. If a prophet, without the distraction of common technological developments is unheard in front of a group that chooses to be around him, what is the state of our soul’s ability to hear when the space to listen is endangered?
What are we doing to cultivate presence?
Did you know that silence nourishes? Scrolling redacts it.
Do we even value the space where nothing is happening as a culture? How do we reassess its value? Do we start with the kids on iPads while they get pizza out at their parents? Or at home when people text each other for dinner, or shall we start on the roads?
I recommend the show. I have recommended it to many, and with a recent scene (which I will not give away) that rang true, for me, of the way Rudolph Steiner and Paramahansa Yoganada write about the Christ, I have been more vocal about sharing. Why? Because I think I see a trend in the silence. We are so often told so many things, that unvetted voices are crowding out our own. We are squeezing the sacred into smaller and smaller places, and there doesn’t seem to be any boundaries coming back unless we erect some.
I need a space for silence. It’s most definitely for the birds; you know the one’s whose songs set us at ease. They only sing when they feel safe, supposedly.
There was a snippet in the show, where everyone is sitting at long tables, making efforts to share out of little, communing by candlelight, a simple invitation to return to connection. Connection creates silence too, but it is a different kind. It’s the kind that fills you up around the tree and the birds (incidentally there is a cardinal eating so many sunflower seeds as I type that I thought she was a squirrel, from all of her cracking). It’s the one by the water, or sitting next to a friend where no words are needed.
The more people I talk to I hear these words: full, overwhelmed and too busy. All of these things create more reactions and less solutions. Silence, on the other hand lets the buzz fall away, and walks us a little closer to ourselves. I suspect it is always true that we can choose to become hopeful, and playful again. That is the ultimate trick, to have the playfulness of a child and the presence of your wisdom co-exist peacefully within.
I recorded this meditation in the summer of 2020, perhaps it will be of use to you now.
Peace be with you,
Kate
It Was Summer. The Wind Blew - Matthew Zapruder
It was summer. The wind blew
away from me, and I stayed here thinking
about a certain mountain. Things got green
then forgot, and in their forgetting
remembered everything that was not
grass, or me. My son forgot
he could not swim, then emerged
tall as laughter, hidden
as the lesson in a song. He forgot
how to tie his shoes then
learned how to draw a face
and tie to a string and run far off
into the place only he could really go.
I chased him but he just grew larger.
For a week he became a carpenter,
hammering filled my heart. My heart
went to the hardware store and bought
all the napping spatulas. It was
summer, so I let them stay up
all night, or they let me.
We swung from the magnolia,
our great leaves fell, it remained
our friend. Each day was that same
sweet holiday that never ended
until the windows got soft. It was summer.
Candles came on like televisions.
That was the last time things were real.
📝 Journal Prompt: Set a 5 minute timer, sit with a tree, and write down what she tells you. Feel free to ask her questions. You could substitute trees for birds, they rarely sit still long enough though.