Sounds of silence

Truth rises from the silence of being to the quiet tremendous presence of the Word. Then, sinking again into silence, the truth of words bears us down into the silence of God.
~Thomas Merton

I love quiet. I CRAVE quiet. I need the special sounds of quiet. Simon and Garfunkel had it goin' on when they coined the phrase "Sounds of Silence." My silent sounds are different than theirs - but that is true for each of us. Your silence sounds different than mine.

Quiet isn't absence of sound. Quiet is absence of noise. Distracting, energy-draining, humanly-manufactured noise. Quiet is an evenness between your inner sound level and the sound level around you. A place where you can listen and actually hear.

It helps to go away, to find solitude in a location where the outer noise level is naturally low. But we can find silence, our quiet place, in many situations. It has more to do with who we are, our sense of being, than with where we are.

For many, silence is a scary place. They don't know what they might hear. Merton says that truth rises out of silence. Truth can be scary - but it is ultimately the only place of healing and regeneration.

Take some time to listen to your silence.