In June of 1997, Joe Klein wrote in the New Yorker magazine:
In a Chicago parochial school last Summer, I watched an African-American nun try to get the attention of a dozen three-year-olds from the housing projects during their first week of preschool. The children [many of whom had been born crack babies] were bouncing off the walls. The nun said, "Children", and she put her hands together in prayer. "Children, sit down and find your power."
Two or three children understood immediately, sat down and put their hands
together; the others continued to race around the room. The nun quietly repeated
the request. Several others sat down, and gradually even the most unruly
children began to sit with their hands clasped in front of them. Finally the
room was silent. The stillness was soothing and profound, something that most of
them had probably never experienced before -- something that they had been able
to achieve only by joining together. Then the nun began to teach them the
alphabet. [-Joe Klein, "In God They Trust", New Yorker, June 16,
1997]
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A few months ago I stood before you and talked about words. And
where we left off then was that words are inadequate and sometimes misleading.
But they are all we have, sometimes, to talk about that which is beyond words'
ability to describe. And it is important for us to talk about such important
matters.
Today, I'm here to say a few words about silence. And about quiet.
What is it about silence?
Listen. It is very hard to get a moment's peace. Traffic. Aircraft. Voices. Machines. Lots of intrusions. Lots of sound. Lots of noise.
It is very noticeable, to me, when someone calls for "a moment of silence" or for some "silent meditation", or in times when I try to worship in silence, how very much noise there is.
We are using Philip Simmons' book Learning to Fall as the text for our adult religious education classes on the Fourth Sunday here. In it, Simmons writes: "I want to tell you about the sound of winter wind through a New Hampshire forest. Some of you have heard the sound I mean, though it's heard only in great stretches of northern woods, far from freeways and flight paths, and if you haven't been to such a place lately, you will have to work to remember it. It's the sound a whole forest makes, unlocatable and everywhere, near and far, intimate and impossibly remote. I do not mean a storm wind, full of high drama, but the gentle, subtle voice of a forest as it speaks of winter peace and winter desolation." ["Winter Mind" in Philip Simmons, Learning to Fall. Bantam Books, New York. 2000. Pg 107]
People who know the desert of the American Southwest describe what seems to be the same sort of silence.
I am told that it is possible, here, to walk in the right directions in the right places and find just the sigh of the wind to listen to - with no engines or voices. But I know the quiet of the Northern Woods that Simmons writes of. I lived in it for many years. I seem to need it.
And here we are. I'm busy talking, making noise, on the topic of silence and how little of it there is. Can't I see the irony of that? Can't I stop talking? Am I addicted to noise and to making it?
Though I suppose if we can talk about writing, or talk about God, we can talk about silence. And maybe we need to.
And, of course, we're not talking about physical silence, but what Bruce Marshal seems to mean when he writes: "For a few moments, let us seek quiet -- not the quiet that is the absence of noise, for there is always noise. Rather it is like the stillness of a friend listening...."
In the adult religious education class where we talked of Simmons' chapter called "Winter Mind". We had a good discussion about the importance of quiet to our lives and to our spiritual growth. It is a topic I mull over often. So, I will say some more.
I once led a vesper service with the title "Honk If You Love Silence." Perhaps I should explain that in the United States, people will stand at the side of the street with a hand-lettered poster, or have a bumper sticker on the car with a slogan like "Honk if you love Jesus" or "Honk for impeachment" or "Honk for Bond Issue 3." And you are supposed to toot your car's horn if you agree. A bit of instant democracy in a noisy world. Learned political discourse.
When "Honk If You Love Silence" was posted, some of my fellow seminarians approached me to ask if the entire half hour vesper service would be silence - that they didn't think they could "do" that. A whole half hour of silence. No, I assured them, we would be talking and reading about silence. So, a few came.
What is our discomfort with quiet?
I've used that discomfort. In my days as a radio reporter, I'd ask some pointed question and just let VU meter come to rest, let the modulation meter on the transmitter stop its jerking dance, and let the studio fill with silence. Politicians in particular seem to feel a need to fill the quiet with the sound of their own voices. I got some interesting answers.
Sam Keene writes "It is difficult to avoid the impression that Western culture has formed a conspiracy against silence." He, too, asks "[W]hy should silence be threatening?" In his book, To a Dancing God he answers "Words are a way of structuring, manipulating, and controlling; thus, when they are absent the specter of loss of control arises. If we cannot name it we cannot control it. Naming gives us power. Hence silence is impotence, the surrender of control. Control is power, and power is safety." [Sam Keene, To a Dancing God, 1970HarperSanFrancisco. Page 43 ff.]
That might explain my experience with politicians. And others.
But then many tell us that silence, quiet, emptiness is the necessary condition for us to receive really important information. In the way our breathing is a matter of a muscle creating a space within us that air flows into, we need to create a space in the noise of our lives for knowledge of spirit to enter.
Robert Weston, in a poem titled "Let There Be Silence" in the collection
Seasons of the Soul writes:
Let there be silence,
Let there be reverence, in your heart;
Let all
the sounds of the earth flood over you
And be heard because
You have known
how to keep silence in yourself
In order that you may receive that which only
silence can make possible.
...
Rest your heart in silence
And a
thousand songs you never heard before
Will pour into your ears.
Throw open
the doors of your heart to all
And as its invitation answer finds
Your
heart will be full
And they who come be filled as well.
Let there be
silence;
Let there be reverence;
Let there be welcome,
And there will
be wonder, in your heart.
Silence, far from impotence, is pure possibility.
And the truly wonderful part, according to Simmons and many others, is that "to become aware of [silence] is to know that it's been there all along. [Simmons, Page 111]
Silence, Simmons writes "is offered to you at every moment, is in fact all around you and within you, as available as breath. All that remains is for you to accept it. That's both easier and harder than it sounds. Emptiness, like silence, like love, is not something we choose, not something we reason our way into but rather something into which we fall, something in which we find ourselves. The fall into emptiness, into silence, has the nature of an accident." [Simmons, Page 112]
Joseph Campbell, talking to Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth book and public television series says "All final spiritual reference is to the silence beyond sound. The word made flesh is the first sound. Beyond that sound is the transcendent unknown, the unknowable. It can be spoken of as the great silence, or as the void, or as the transcendent absolute." [The Power of Myth / Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers. Pg 97ff. 1988 Doubleday, New York, New York]
Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: "Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence, the universal beauty to which each part and particle is equally
related; the eternal one. When it breaks through our intellects it is genius;
when it breathes through our will it is virtue; when it flows through our
affections it is love." The wise silence.
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In another of the Power of
Myth series, Moyers and Campbell are talking about the sound AUM. Campbell says:
"'AUM' is a word that represents to our ears that sound of the energy of the
universe of which all things are manifestations. You start in the back of the
mouth "ahh," and then "oo," you fill the mouth, and "mm" closes the mouth. When
you pronounce this properly, all vowel sounds are included in the pronunciation.
AUM…. All words are … fragments of AUM, just as all images are fragments of the
Form of forms. AUM is a symbolic sound that puts you in touch with that
resounding being that is the universe." And Campbell continues: "The birth, the
coming into being, and the dissolution that cycles back. AUM is called the
'four-element syllable.' A-U-M -- and what is the fourth element? The silence
out of which AUM arises, and back into which it goes, and which underlies it. My
life," he says, "is the A-U-M, but there is a silence underlying it, too. That
is what we would call the immortal."
Or, the wise silence, the universal beauty.
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When I was living in
Berkeley, California, I had the choice of Unitarian Universalist churches to
attend. Imagine - a choice of UU churches! I went to several. And most often, of
a Sunday, I could be found in Quaker meetings.
In the meetings of the Society of Friends, the Quakers, people sit together in silence. And, actually, if I understand the tradition, we are waiting for God to speak in the silence to us, or through one of us to us all. Sometimes, someone will speak. Or sing. There is a marvelous saying in the tradition of the Friends that "that of God in thee speaks to that of God in me." And if both of us are quiet, we just might hear that voice. I found the worship in silence with the Friends to be a wonderful, meaningful, worshipful experience.
I tried the Friends, and returned to their meetings, because I became aware of the hubbub of UU services in the churches there. There was always something going on. Words being said or read or sung. Music being played. And the periods of silence were so short. One church had an organ that played so loudly I couldn't hear the congregation or the choir sing. In another there were three ministers, all of whom had something to say, and two choirs that stood and sang at various places. I felt enveloped in sounds. With the Friends, I found the quiet I needed for my spirit. Joe Klein's words about the kids from the Chicago housing projects came to me :"The stillness was soothing and profound." And it was something that we "had been able to achieve only by joining together." We were ready to learn.
I know the sound of you
The sound
Of your voice
Of your
breathing
Of your heart beating
In the quiet I know you
The quiet
Between words
Between
breaths
Between heartbeats
Between us
In the quiet
I come to know you