Silence

“Silence is golden.”  A well known saying used by everybody from college librarians to overwrought parents.  I’m thinking a mother made it up while traveling with her kids in a car or covered wagon. 

Whatever its origins, I think the saying shares truth.  Silence is valuable.  But why? 

I went camping a while back.  For two weeks my dog Meg and I lived in the Pisgah National Forest.  I needed to get close to heaven so I went to the mountains. 

While I was there I was silent (for the most part) and I practiced silence as a spiritual discipline every morning.  Every morning I rose long before the sun, made my coffee, prayed my prayers and sat in silence.  Every morning I was sitting in silence as the darkness slowly, reluctantly surrendered to the light.

I think there is no time and place more void of sound than the pre-dawn hour in the middle of the woods.  The temperature drops a degree or two, the nighttime creatures are going to sleep, the daytime creatures are still dreaming…and silence fills the void.   

It’s the kind of noiselessness that can be felt, like a heavy mountain fog.  It grows into your psyche like kudzu grows into a tree until the tree can no longer be seen.  It gradually fills every part of your being like the slow rains fill the river till it overflows its banks.

Then, in that silence, you sense that God has invaded every single space in your soul.  And in that space you know him.  To your surprise you commune with him.  

I believe in meeting God in the voluminous worship of the gathered church, but my intuition tells me that God inhabits the silence as much as he inhabits the praise and the prayers and the preaching of his children…sometimes maybe even more.  That’s why silence is golden.  Because you will likely meet God there.       

If you’ve never practiced silence as a spiritual discipline, perhaps you would consider it.  Maybe turn off the noise makers, put down the devises and be silent…listen…wait.  Who knows, in silence you may encounter God.