Longing To Get Back

According to audio-ecologist’s “Searching for Silence”, Gordon Hempton, it's not easy to find silence in the modern world. "If a quiet place is one where you can listen


for 15 minutes in daylight hours without hearing a human-created sound, there are no quiet places left in Europe. There are none east of the Mississippi River. And in the American West? Maybe 12." We live in a noisy world.



Most people assume that silence is the absence of noise, but it is not. Hempton continues, "For true silence is not noiselessness... silence is the complete absence of all audible mechanical vibrations, leaving only the sounds of nature at her most natural. Silence is the presence of everything, undisturbed." I know of one of these silent places Hempton describes. Tucked in a “holler” on the north side of School house Mountain, just up the road from the sleepy village of Stechoa in western end of North Carolina. No human noise, only the chickadee and occasional Blue Jay or the chatter of a gray squirrel from its nest. And at times the gentle wind as it dances around me and the water spilling over from a small cistern.



Being able to hear the sounds of nature is an anticipated and far too often rare gift in my world. A world bombarded by artificial noise. Of course, it is often the case that I use noise as a distraction from truly listening. I often drown out the silence by my own busyness, filling my day with constant movement and activity, so that I rarely take the time to pay attention, and to tune my ears not only to the sound around me, but also to the stirrings of my own heart and mind. In all honesty, sometimes I am afraid of what I might hear if I do truly listen.





Of course, paying attention in silence is not always as benevolent or delightful as hearing the natural sounds around me. Keeping silence intentionally reminds me of my smallness in a vast universe, and brings to light many of my deepest and darkest thoughts and feelings. It’s when I clear my ears of external noise, I hear my own thoughts. Many thoughts that arise in silent spaces are ugly, distorted, and grave. Listening in silence exposes my pretense and self-righteousness, my falsehoods, hypocrisy and self-importance. There is little room to hide. At times I am left with myself in all my brokenness and I dislike the sense, intently.



And yet, listening to the thoughts of my darkened heart and mind gives the opportunity for a type of reorganization and evaluation, emotionally and spiritually. If you will; a renewal. There comes a new direction for living. More space to listen, not only to myself, but others, and most importantly, the still, small voice of God.



Author Alan Jones has written in “Soul Search,” that "silence, in the end, can become a healing and comforting experience." When I pay attention in the silence, a space opens up where I can meet with God. Unlike prayers where I do all the talking, Jones describes the listening posture of prayer as "a daily willingness to place ourselves on the threshold and wait there." Indeed, he goes on to suggest that cultivating quiet in our lives becomes the time when we move from the agitated periphery of our lives, identifying with our lives without qualification or added information to simply a silent interior space.



For me, paying attention in silence is not simply for the sake of listening to the often unheard sounds around me nor is it totally ascetically-motivated sensory deprivation. Instead, it is tuning my heart and mind to attend to sounds that truly matter. For me, as a Christian, prayerful listening is the opportunity to attune my heart to the voice of God. Experience has lead me to believe that my silenced heart is often the only fitting response to the overwhelming holiness of God's presence. As the ancient prophet wrote: But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.



Yes, I need to quickly reclaim some days at Quite Rest. Where the silence is often lonely, as the gospel writers suggest. And yet, there, in my lonely, silent spaces of the hollers of Western North Carolina, the still, small voice of God can be heard.