A funny thing happened to me recently. I sat down to write a blog post and for a change, put in a new CD. Normally, these days I don’t listen to music when I write.  I think I lasted about 10 seconds into the first song before I was frantic to turn it off.  I needed the silence. Silence to contemplate and listen. The world around us has become extremely noisy -noisy with input that is visual and auditory and sensory in every way. My spirit yearns for silence. And so I carve it out in these moments… when I write, when I meditate. There I find silence. Lately, although music plays, I work to find silence from my thoughts when I work out.

Appropriate silence gives us space to be without reacting to any other stimulus.  It gives us room to breathe. In silence there is a kind of deep, abiding rest.

A few weeks ago I wrote about rest-about doing too much.  One thing I noticed during that time was that the more I did, the noisier my life became.  Not just externally, but internally. I had too many balls in the air and each had its own set of demands and reminders that seemed to play in an infinite loop because my head was too full to hold anything for very long.  I mentioned this to one of my teachers and she reminded me that for those of us who are working all the time, we need to remember to leave time for listening.  I loved this because it moved silence and contemplation from a place of indulgence to a place of priority in my work. It reminded me that to be effective in my work, I had to feed all of the parts of me, including, or maybe especially, the part of me that needs silence, and dreaming, and depth with stillness.  Feeding this part of me is critical to my work.

The irony is that in most of my life I don’t need permission. I’ve worked through a lot of that. But somehow, when I can see much work to be done, and its work I love, I need reminders that silence and stillness are also very much a part of that work.  And even beyond that – without them we cannot effectively do the more active kinds of spiritual work (and in that, I include raising children!).

I still struggle to make it all fit and to have the moments of silence that I need, but now I protect and nurture them because without them, I cannot be effective. Today I give thanks for the beauty of silence in the midst of our busy lives.