Lately, when I hear the word “quiet”, I experience an ache that starts somewhere behind my ribs and then spreads out from there. It’s something I take notice of because quiet is not in my comfort zone, so it’s interesting that I find myself longing for it. Typically I prefer stilted conversation to the discomfort of shared silence. Part of my resistance to quiet is because it’s never really silent in my head. So quiet spaces, like showers and car rides, are an invitation for the voices (let’s call them Anxiety and Fear) to flex their muscles.
“I just want it to be quiet in my head,” said one of my daughters recently, “I think about going somewhere to escape, but wherever I go, I’m still there.”
I could feel her lament in my bones because they are thoughts I’ve had myself many times over. That’s why I often fill my head with a podcast, drowning out my own voices with voices outside of myself. Although my fear of silence has actually improved somewhat over the last few years, I’ve also realized that quieting my mind by turning on a floodgate of other voices is not the same thing as true silence, but more of a stalemate.
A week or two ago, I heard Ada Limón’s poem, The Quiet Machine, during her On Being interview. (If you aren’t familiar with her poem, it might help if you read it first, go ahead, I’ll wait.) When I went back to look for it again, I found an animated video of her poem and below the poem there was a writing prompt. Her poem begins: I’m learning so many different ways to be quiet. The prompt was to write down that first line and then list different types of quiet in your life. When I did the exercise in my journal, I found it was a pretty short list. That was when I realized that although I have a very decent amount of time alone, my quiet spaces are more like conversations (with a podcast or a book or myself) than silence.
It’s much easier to make a list of my Noisy Spaces:
My morning “quiet time” when I’m filling my head up but not allowing room for silence.
When I’m getting ready in the morning (or really any other part of my day) and my phone is dinging and I can’t finish one task before switching to the next and then the next.
When my children approach me with problems and because they are used to instant responses (thank you, Amazon and texting), they want answers and action immediately, no matter what I’m already doing.
When I make art and feel joyful while making it but then I let the feeling get stolen away by posting the work up and checking for approval.
When I allow too many, albeit, usually wise or interesting voices, into my head at once.
The list could go on and on. When I look at this list I realize that my longing is for something more than literal silence, what I’m really longing for is a quiet in my soul. Also known as peace. I’m longing to live the way God designed me to live: fully present in my body, tuned into the textures and sounds and people immediately around me, and trusting at any given moment that the rest is up to God.
Until this week, I didn’t know what I was giving up for Lent. But whenever I thought about what to do, the word quiet surfaced in my mind. This week my counselor and I had a chance to get a bit more concrete with how to practice a quieting of my soul. Hint: It starts with the very practical quieting of the phone, because we all know that our phones are floodgates of noise.
In the World Vision Lent Devotional that our family has been doing together, again the invitation to silence was offered. In a short devotional video, Danielle Strickland spoke about a social worker in Afghanistan that had been featured in an earlier video:
“Every day she spends time in silence before the Lord….it felt very clear to me that her silence before God was a way of surrendering, it offered her the chance to quiet, maybe the noises in her own head, maybe that tape ‘you’re not enough, you’re not enough, you’re not enough’ maybe all of those external invitations ‘you should do more, you should make something happen, you should do this, you should do that’...allowing herself to be held by God, to say, ‘I accept myself and I release myself to the care of God, who is at work in the world, who is filled with everything I need-”
The challenge Danielle issued was to set a timer for three minutes of silence. So yesterday I did it. I am used to filling silence with my own words, so I found myself unable to be completely quiet. But I imagined God holding me and the only word I voiced was “surrender, surrender, surrender.”
Silence, I am learning, can be more than the absence of noise, it can be an intentional invitation to peace. And I find myself curious if, with a regular practice of peace, quiet can be found even amidst the noise.
Words to Remember
“It is our deliberate removal of ourselves from the workday scene so that we can be open and spiritually uncluttered-at least for a little while. We can be totally present to ourselves even as we put ourselves out of the way. We can give our undivided attention to whatever God might send us, be it fascinating temptations, sustaining and comforting insights, or simple silence.”
-Margaret Guenther, At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
From the Sketchbook
Favorite Finds
Books
Our family’s long-time children’s librarian turned long-time friend recommended this book to me and she was one hundred percent right.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt: I highly recommend the audiobook. I tend to avoid stories where something has happened to a child but, in this case, the event happened thirty years ago. The story is really about what is happening with the characters in the present, so that part of the story wasn’t a problem for me. Did I mention one of the narrators is an octopus but this is not a fantasy book?
Poem
This poem came my way from a few different directions this week (Thank you, if you were one of them.)
The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
A Practice
Set a timer for three minutes. Sit down, take a deep breath, and release yourself in silence to the care of God today. Let that surrender be a source of authentic hope. (from Danielle Strickland)
Blessings from the Guest Nest,
-Aimee