Finding Time for Silence
Spend some time in silence every day.
Maxim #9
We live in a culture filled with noise. It saturates every nook and cranny of our modern world. It is difficult to go anywhere today without the sounds of engines from planes, trains and automobiles. Then there are the sounds of our televisions and ipods. Advertisements make their assault on our senses twenty-four hours a day. It seems that we as a culture have issues with silence.
I remember clearly the first time I stepped out of my car at Conception Abbey in Northwest Missouri. There was something strange about it that I couldn’t quite name. Then I realized what it was that had caught my attention, pure silence. I had rarely been in a place where there was this kind of tangible silence, but there in the vast fields and farmland I could almost reach out and touch it.
The difficulty that I have most often found in trying to be silent, even for a few minutes a day, is the amount of time and effort it really takes. Upon first deciding to enter into silence, I begin to realize just how much exterior noise there really is that surrounds me. Then, just as I am able to quiet the exterior, I realize there is still much more interior noise that has yet to be silent. It takes no time at all for all the interior voices that have been drowned out to raise the volume inside my head, vying for my attention. It is only with real discipline and time every day in exterior silence, that I can eventually come to an interior one as well. And every once in awhile, when I have come to a deep silence, there is a place created that is a meeting place for God.
But even when I don’t reach that deep place of silence (most days I don’t) there is something to be gained in intentionally spending quiet time alone. All those thoughts and internal voices can tell me so much about my life and where it needs improvement. Most of all, silence is a form of rest that I find very needed as I make my way daily through a sea of noise.
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