Rediscovering Silence 

A disclaimer:

I believe in God, and I love film. In some ways, they’re not inextricably linked to silence, but for me, they’re part of how I understand it.

As a result, both make appearances throughout this book. Whether you connect with them as much as I do, whether you could care less, or whether you’re in the curious middle, you are welcome here.

for Missy
I still hear you in the silence.

Introduction: Silence is more golden than ever before.

In the opening moments of the 1997 sci-fi film Contact, the title enters the screen silently, fades to blue and disappears into black.

Then, suddenly, there’s a hideous burst of sound. A sonic explosion.

As our ears strain under the aural whiplash, we realize: even though we’re hearing an explosion, we’re not looking at one. We’re looking at the Earth, just close enough to see its colorful marble against the backdrop of space. That hideous burst of sound is a blender-full of pop songs, and they’re loud and intense. “Semi-Charmed Life,” by Third Eye Blind. “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls. “God Shuffled His Feet” by the Crash Test Dummies.

Then, almost imperceptibly at first, we begin to back away from the Earth. As we do, the songs start to get older. “Funkytown.” “Purple People Eater.” We hear Richard Nixon insist, “I am not a crook,” and Neil Armstrong announce his first steps on the moon.

Then the Earth fades from view, on the other side of an asteroid belt and Mars. The noise blips and scrambles for a moment, but as we continue moving backward, farther and farther, the sound re-emerges. We hear even earlier songs, radio, broadcast political speeches, until our galaxy itself comes into view, and then beyond. The Eagle Nebula, looking as it does like a cloudy parent helping a young cloud child in its first steps.

By this point, there is no more sound. And yet, we continue to travel backward. Galaxies and nebulae themselves now seem numerous and small as stars. Backward, backward. Silence, and yet more silence. Until we hear a young girl’s voice, and the galaxy-stars of space coalesce into a macro view of her iris.

Without a single word of dialogue, we’ve been immersed into a breathtaking view of the universe. We’ve also been introduced to an idea: there’s an intricate relationship—and even limits—between us as people and the universe where we live. That relationship can be understood through sound and through silence.  

Sound happens.

You may have never considered this idea before, that sound moves out from Earth and into space. In reality, it doesn’t proceed very far before the lack of atmosphere lets the sound waves drop between its fingers. But if we could imagine for a moment, this intro sequence from Contact may have something to tell us through its fanciful astronomy.

Imagine a geographical (make that astronomical) map of sound and silence, a line or web that stretches from the sounds you’re hearing right now all the way out to the first sounds ever made in this universe. Imagine for a moment that we could travel into space, following the threads of these sounds, and that we could venture past the ranges of even the earliest broadcasts. The sounds would be fainter, smaller, but if we listened closely enough, we might hear the battle cries of Napoleon and Genghis Khan, the earthquake at the crucifixion of Jesus, and the public performance of Euripides’ plays.

If we traveled far enough, pressing far past the speed of light, we might even reach the first poem from Adam to Eve, the music of the spheres, the fluttering rush of trees as they first burst out of the ground, the audible stretch of space, the first sounding of the voice of God (just before the light exploded), the whir of the Spirit hovering above the face of the waters, the silence of unformed darkness. The silence.

In this vision of history, our countless sounds have pushed out from Earth like ten trillion canoes into a lake with only one shore. Sound happens, we might say, and it happens simply from humans living their lives, and from things being made.

Silence is golden.

Yet even though sound happens all the time, many of us might still wonder why we call silence golden as a result. What’s so golden about it? Or is this just a pointless phrase, one of those old wives’ sayings, now caught in the amber of permanent nostalgia?

After all, not all of our experiences with silence have been positive. It’s even possible that you think of silence as something scary, elusive, or mythical. You may long for “a little peace and quiet,” but be clueless about what to do with it when it’s finally in your grasp. Or you may relish silence, but remain convinced that it’s something achievable on only the rarest of occasions.

Here’s what I hope to convince you of as you journey through this book: silence is golden. Not just because it’s valuable and rare—though, boy howdy, can it be valuable and rare. (The wonderful news is that it’s just as valuable when it ceases to be rare.) It’s also not golden just because it’s a luxury. By the end of this book, I hope you’ll see it’s far more than that.

Silence is a gold that’s meant for everyday use, just as a wedding ring both symbolizes and signals a unique, committed relationship set apart from any other. In that sense, your marriage is rare, and yet everyday. Equally, our experience of silence can be like the golden audio jacks on high-end stereo equipment, since gold is one of the finest conductive materials. It helps energy to find its way to where it needs to go, and helps to turn that energy into music. I don’t know about you, but I could benefit from something this valuable and rare, a luxury that becomes part of my everyday experience, something that welcomes me in to collaborate with it, and then helps me make the most of my energy. Perhaps that sounds intriguing to you, too.

Above all, as we continue, I hope to convince you that silence is not an absence. It’s not simply the lack of sound. Silence is an entity, and it is a gift.

Along these lines, there’s a joke about a man caught in a flood. He’s an atheist, but decides this is a good time to start praying. So he looks skyward and pleads, “God, if you’re real, save me from drowning!”

Soon after, a neighbor paddles up in a canoe. “Hop aboard!”

“I can’t,” says the man. “I’m waiting for God to rescue me.”

The neighbor shrugs his shoulders and paddles on.

Then the police come by in a boat. “Get in,” they say. “We’ll take you to safety.”

“No thanks,” says the man. “I’m waiting for God to rescue me.”

Soon the waters have risen high enough that the man has to crawl on his roof. He’s still praying, but also becoming increasingly skeptical.

He hears a whirring noise and peers up to see a helicopter descending, a rope dangling down toward him. He waves them off, mouthing something they can’t hear because the noise of the blades is too loud. But you know what it is.

Not too long after, the man drowns. He arrives at the pearly gates, which is how all jokes like this go. And when he arrives, he demands to speak with God immediately. So he’s ushered into God’s throne room, where he starts to bellyache. “If you’re real, which it sure looks like you are, why didn’t you answer my prayers and rescue me?”

“Here’s the thing,” God says. “I sent you my canoe, my police boat, and my helicopter, and you didn’t get into any of them.”

In this admittedly ridiculous story, these prayers into the silence are being answered. They float into the silence like one of Contact’s audible canoes and, even though what arrives back out of the silence is misunderstood, it is in fact a gift, a series of gifts—though the man doesn’t realize it at the time.

The gift of silence

In a similar way, it’s my firm belief that silence is a gift in our lives, too, one that we similarly fail to recognize on a daily basis, no matter how impassionedly we plead for it. When I call it a gift, I mean that in both senses of the word: it is a present, and it is a capacity.

First, it is possible to see silence as a wrapped-up present, a perk we’re invited to accept on a regular basis, as if every day is our birthday. If we can come to see silence in this way, as something given to us, it can also feel extremely given as a result. We can relax about our obsessions to manufacture it, and start receiving it instead. The silence we long to be given is a part of shalom, that true “peace and quiet” we all crave. It’s a calm both outside of us and inside us too.

Second, silence involves our capacity to find it, to value it, and even to use it. In fact, if we don’t have the capacity for silence, we’ll miss it just as often and just as surely as the man in the flood. If this leads you to despair; if you’re realizing that the capacity for silence is like the gift of perfect pitch or a photographic memory (something you don’t possess), remember the first meaning of silence as gift. Knowing where to look for silence? That’s an ability in itself. Knowing what to do with it once you’ve found it? That’s a talent worth cultivating. Thankfully, the ability to find and harness silence isn’t only the domain of gurus, monks, and horse whisperers. Becoming able to interact with silence is a gift we all can exercise, a capacity we all can strengthen. That’s why this book is for you.

If you’ve experienced the harm that’s possible in silence, or in the misuses of silence, you may be sounding the alarm at this point. I can almost hear your thoughts: “You’re acting as if silence is thoroughly virtuous, like the sonic equivalent of finding Xanadu. It’s not.”

I agree, Silence is not exclusively positive, or even just neutral. It can be misused. It can be neglected. We can have far too little of it, or far too much. But ultimately, I have also come to believe that silence is meant to be used, pursued, embraced, explored, and all for good. When it’s properly understood, our experience with silence can be one of the richest parts of our life, giving birth to new ideas, a sense of calm, empathy, awe, and so much more.

As we’ll explore in a moment, we do live in an increasingly noisy, distracted world. As a result, silence is increasingly golden and increasingly rare. Is it even possible to reclaim, or is it mere naïveté to think so? Stay tuned.

What to expect when you’re expecting silence

I became interested in silence many years ago. I’m not even sure when it began or why. By 2011, I felt I needed to create something with what I had found. So I put together an hour-long multimedia experience called The Uses of Silence and presented it to 40 friends. In 2019, I updated the experience and presented it again; this time, it was two and a half hours long, after several rounds of cutting. From the reactions I received afterward, I could tell that the topic resonated keenly, that in 2019 it feels even more timely, more urgent.

There are many special guests in this book, some of the most valuable findings of my research. Most of what I’m sharing with you is not original to me. It’s only the gathering that is, the naming of these kinds of silence, and some of the deeper potential I find in words or ideas that may already be familiar to you.

I haven’t gathered these influences because I agree wholeheartedly with everything they have to say. I doubt you will either. But I want to welcome you in advance to be open, to listen . . . and to assume there is something valuable hidden in here for you, something you can receive only if you are quiet and calm, waiting for the gift. Listen to these chapters like you would listen to a friend. 

This book is meant to be a journey. I’m your tour guide. It’s my job to take you on a scenic route, introduce you to the natives, point out the landmarks. My sincere hope is that you’ll experience something new along the way. Something that will change you. I don’t know in advance what that change may be for you. But I want you to welcome it.

The first section of this book — How Silence Got Lost — will take up the question of why silence has become such a rarity. As human civilization expands, two realities have kept us, time and again, from good silence. They are distraction and noise. We’ll also consider three powerful ways silence has been misused. Whether we’ve been the ones harmed as a result of these misuses, or whether we’re the ones to blame, these three misuses (the silent treatment, silent betrayal, and deprivation) all contribute to our resistance to silence, our readiness to paint it black, as the Rolling Stones might say. Finally, we’ll consider the vulnerability most of us experience when we’re faced with silence, even in the smallest of quantities. What does this vulnerability have to teach us? How can we move past it to find the goodness in silence?

The second section of the book — Where to Find Yourself in Silence — considers seven distinct uses of silence, which range from the quietness of rest to the vividness of wonder, from the restraint of respect to the active leaning-in of listening, and across three others that are less explored, but just as rich: canvas, answer, and anticipation. Between the last two chapters, we’ll also take a bypass to consider what silence looks like when it shapes the life, death, and afterlife of a single person: Jesus. 

Along the way, there will be time for you to personalize what you’re hearing. Silence wants to make a personal home inside your life. It wants to transform the noise you experience into music. And it will transform you not through just reading or hearing about silence, but through your experience of it.

The first opportunity to personalize is a section at the end of each chapter marked ‘Selah,’ each time with a brief suggestion. That’s your cue to spend a couple minutes personalizing what you’ve just read. Selah, as you may know, is a Hebrew word that’s tough to translate—which of course means it’s special. No joke. Some people think it’s a musical direction, back when the Psalms were actually being sung. Some people think it’s meant to be a break, a silence, a mark of punctuation that says, “Whoa. Stop and think about that for a moment, will you.”

In the second part of the book, there will also be a second section after each chapter marked ‘Your Turn.’ It is as it sounds, an invitation for you to personalize that chapter to your life. There will be several suggestions each time, ways of exercising that kind of silence in your own life. Of course, some will fit you and others won’t. So, please, I welcome you to treat this book as an interactive experience, even more than you might normally treat a book.

You know your own life far better than I do. What you hear in the chapters that follow will resonate distinctly for you. What I share will summon specific moments, specific responses to your mind. Maybe there’s an action you feel compelled to take, a habit you want to try out, something you want to stop doing, someone you remember and want to contact. Whatever it is that you hear, that you’re ready for, I encourage you in advance to be brave and take that step.

Transposing noise into music

As we consider the many facets of silence, and as we avoid naïveté in how we approach it, I’d encourage you to consider the difference between noise and music (something musicologists and composers have discussed for centuries).[1] Noise is random sound, meaningless sound. We talk about noise hurting our ears, as if there’s a small act of violence taking place between its sonic waves and our bodies. Music, on the other hand, is sound that’s been organized, resulting in a meaningful rhythm between sound and silence that adds up to a meaningful experience.[2] When we love something, we might say it’s music to our ears, as opposite an idea from violence that could be imagined. In other words, there’s not just a slight difference between organized and unorganized sound. The gulf is massive.

When our daughter Eden was only three, we used to play a game while driving. My wife Alison or I would hum or whistle the first two notes of a song, sometimes the first three. To our great shock, Eden could identify the tune far more often than not, from only a couple notes! As she got older, we shifted from sung notes to something more like audible Morse code. In a matter of seconds, she could guess “Jingle Bells” simply from its opening sequence of “duh-duh-duh . . .” This was fun not just because Eden was musically gifted (though she is). It’s because at its heart, music is more fundamentally a matter of time than it is of notes.

 Music is the choice of which spaces to leave, how often to leave them, and how long they should be. Back in the late 1700s, Mozart was convinced that “melody is the essence of music,” but by 1959, Leonard Bernstein insisted that music is “time itself that must be carved up, molded and remolded until it becomes, like a statue, an existing shape and form.”[3] If you’re still unconvinced, consider the difference between Rue’s whistle, also known as the “Mockingjay” from the Hunger Games films, and the opening to the “Love Theme” from Henry Mancini’s score to 1968’s Romeo and Juliet. They have exactly the same intervals between the notes, in exactly the same order.[4] The only difference? The length of time between the notes. One really does sound like birdsong, the other like longing.  

Your life is like music in this way. You may find that you experience noise far more often than you’d like. And silence may seem much more of a mirage than you’d wish. But just like you’d never want a life of unending work, or waking hours with no sleep, it’s worth the journey to write silence back into your life. To give it time as well as space. My hope for you in this book is that you can begin to find, pursue, and even help to create a meaningful rhythm between sound and silence in your own experience, a rhythm that transforms your life more into the music it’s meant to be.

Are you ready to begin?

[1] On the differences between noise and music, see https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01153/full.

[2] On music as organized sound, see https://physics.info/music/.

[3] Mozart’s claim of music as melody can be found here: https://libquotes.com/wolfgang-amadeus-mozart/quote/lby5j9d, while Bernstein’s claim of music as time can be found in his book The Joy of Music, here: https://books.google.com/books?id=TKRLstZDYLMC&pg=PA160&lpg=PA160.

[4] Rue’s whistle, also known as the “Mockingjay,” can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHNbrIPFMY4, while Henry Mancini’s “Love Theme” from  Romeo and Juliet can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaA2WiyqO1E.