“See how nature — trees, flowers, grass — grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence…we need silence to be able to touch souls.”

– Mother Teresa

After writing about the allure of my morning walks being partially due to the chance for silence, I began thinking about how noisy life really can be.  When was the last time you remember enjoying more than a moment of silence?  I take a deep breath, and I can hear the air move through my nose and mouth as it fills my lungs.  I breathe out, and I can hear the escape of my exhaled air as it returns to the atmosphere outside of my body.  For an instant, between the inhale and the exhale, there is silence.  Try it.  Can you hear what I am saying?  My mind then goes to one of my favorite poets, Kabir, who says, “Tell me, student, what is God?  He is the breath inside the breath.”  And I think again of silence.  Mother Teresa’s words come to me.  She speaks of the silence of nature, and I could substitute “wisdom” for “silence” in her statement.  All the time we spend making noise only serves to obscure the silent wisdom that continues to support our very existence.

Maybe I am more aware of this than usual because I’ve just returned from a school meeting for one of my kids.  There we sat, five of us, limited to an hour’s time to discuss and decide upon a program that will last for a whole year of her education.  If we need silence in order to collect our thoughts and reflect on them — if we need silence in order to notice and incorporate the wisdom that underlies the noise — then I would venture to say that there was not much wisdom at work in the meeting where everyone talked more than we listened.  Wisdom will have to show itself in the quiet moments we spend reflecting on our discussions; and I am certain that we will need another time to sort out the data and pull it together.  I wonder how different our meeting might have been if we had taken a couple of minutes now and then to silently consider each person’s contributions.

It should come as no surprise that I am a huge fan of nature.  In the silent times I spend away from the noise and clutter of manufactured life, I learn things about the world that also teach me about myself.  Our bodies grow in silence.  Our blood flows in silence.  Our hair and skin and nails all grow and fall away silently.  Silence resides within each cell of our body and is an intrinsic part of what we are; yet we tend to use noise and distraction to define who we are.  Perhaps if we take the time to quiet our minds and quiet our restlessness we will discover the silent wisdom that we already possess.  Perhaps when we find it, we will discover that who we are is something wonderful and surprising and much bigger than we ever could have imagined.  Perhaps when we learn to hear silence, we will know at last the secrets of being alive.