There is one final use of silence, and I hope you have already felt it in the life and death and afterlife of Jesus.

It is wonder.

For me, the experience of wonder as silence is depicted perfectly in the “Spielberg face.”[1] Maybe you don’t know that term, but you’ve definitely seen it. You’re watching a Steven Spielberg film and the camera pans in. There’s a person directly in your view, maybe a crowd. They’re unmoving, and each face you see is wearing awe. Their eyes are wide, perhaps even widening as you approach. They are gobsmacked by wonder.

Think of Indiana Jones as he marvels in the glow of the holy grail. Elliott watching his new friend E.T. finally head home in a spectacle of light. Celie, staring across the fields in The Color Purple. Fields of townspeople, caught in the radiance of aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Schindler, realizing at the end that he could have done more. Victor Navorski, finally seeing the snows of New York City after weeks stuck in The Terminal. Tom Hanks again, as Captain John Miller, whose wondering eyes open the story that becomes Saving Private Ryan.

The charmed tents of wonder

These are all examples of the Spielberg face, among dozens more. It may even be possible that the Spielberg face is the crucial center of the Spielberg mystique. That the near-universal draw to his films may in fact revolve around the reality that this world, this life, each story, has pain and challenge to be sure, but also moments of wonder, silent moments that somehow (and magically) contain far more space and substance than we might expect or even imagine—like the charmed tents in Harry Potter that are normal and small on the outside, but spacious and grand on the inside.[2] These moments of wonder might even be big enough to counterbalance all the hardship you can throw at them. That is their secret, the secret held in these blips of silence, meaningful both to the wearer of wonder and to the one who knows their story.

There is wonder all around us if we have the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it. There is wonder in the fact that God made us creative beings just like himself, and that people all over the world are bearing his image by painting, singing, dancing, writing, being a good manager building, navigating, spelunking, discovering, dissecting, preserving. Every single one of these means ‘human,’ and so many more. There is wonder too in the fact that God made us not to just live in the world but to eat it. And that he made it taste good. Not just good and predictable, but jam-packed full of thousands of flavors and flavor combinations, enough to inspire cuisine as distinct as barbeque and sushi, curry and saffron, lemon and chocolate, street tacos and molecular gastronomy. In acting out our gifts and enjoying the gift of good food, we again experience the charmed tents of wonder where, for a moment or a brief season, the world seems suddenly to open up in unexpected bliss.

The reality of being a limited human being means having getting to wait (anticipation). It means having getting to rest, and having getting to accept what answers we receive. But it also means getting to wonder. After all, wonder can only happen to people who are small enough to be stunned by what’s beyond them. The silence of answer may occur because there’s something we’re not ready for, and so aporia can put us in our place, but wonder puts us in our place in the most majestic of ways: a place with a view. It’s an amazing experience to be limited, to be merely human, wonder reminds us. If we were the height of a fireworks display, they’d feel insignificant, or even pesky. Since we’re small, they’re breathtaking.

Many of us have experienced these ephemeral moments of wonder, where we knew with certainty that we were dipping our spoons into the divine. Moments where we were no longer deluded about being the center of the universe, because we were busy having our hair blown back by simply stepping in for a small cameo at a main event so powerful that our body still glows with the memory of it.

T. S. Eliot writes in his poem The Waste Land about just such a moment of transcendent wonder. His poem comes only two decades about Joseph Conrad’s novel named The Heart of Darkness, and so it is with intentionality that he flips Conrad’s title on its head as he remembers a moment of beauty, one where human love melted into transcendence:

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.[3]

Wonder doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it can be so intense that it’s still visible in the rearview mirror decades later. This is what several of the ancient philosophers call the sublime: greatness that reaches such a magnitude that it’s both humbling and ennobling to experience, an honor to witness.[4]

The feast of epiphany

I’m not sure if you’ve thought about it this way, but when you turn wonder up to 11, you get epiphany: that sudden moment when everything comes unexpectedly together. When something makes sense, for the first time. By the way, the word itself was created to describe the day when the traveling magi discovered Jesus as a young child; many still celebrate the Feast of Epiphany as a result. But now it’s used for any sudden moment of realization. These too, these realizations that seem to arrive as gifts, are wonder. And our experience of them is likely to produce a silence, momentary and profound, that differs from any other kind of silence.[5]

Admittedly, I love epiphany captured on film, and by now it should come as no surprise for you to learn that film is somehow involved. I love it in the series House, M.D. where a pain-in-the-neck of a Sherlock doctor experiences one epiphany per episode, where suddenly and almost without warning, the true and mysterious diagnosis of his patient visits him like a dove returned to the ark. The look on his face is like agony being swallowed up into ecstasy, into gratitude, into power and love and sudden clarity.[6]

This look on our faces during the silence of wonder is important, because epiphany is not cleverness; it’s awakening. It’s not a show of force; it’s an act of acceptance. It’s not manufactured; it’s received. Which is why my other favorite cinematic example, one I’m not at all ashamed to admit, is from the Disney movie Tangled. The film itself is in large part about the gift of epiphany, the truth that there are such shining moments waiting for each of us, where we will realize not just profound insights, but in fact who we are.

In the scene I have in mind, the imprisoned Rapunzel is scolded by her adopted stepmother for sneaking out of her imprisonment and waltzing through the palace festivities. “The world is dark and selfish and cruel,” the woman scowls, confining Rapunzel to her bedroom in the tower, “If it finds even the slightest ray of light, it destroys it.” At this, she throws the drapes closed.

After a moment, in the silence, Rapunzel unfolds the small banner she was given at the royal celebration: a sunshine made of wavy spokes. And then, it begins to happen. The epiphany starts to arrive. As she lies on her bed in resignation, she looks across the paintings she’s made on her bedroom walls and ceilings, years of them. What is that she sees in the painted constellation above her? She squints, and then unfolds the sunshine once more to compare. Yes, it’s the same pattern! And there too, in the grouping of birds on another wall. There, in the painting of a fern, and there, as the shape of a fairy! Her eyes widen, the Spielberg face. Within moments, she sees it and she truly sees it, and she understands, caught up in the wonder. She has been painting this same flourish, unknowingly, for years in captivity, not only because she remembers it from before her captivity but because all along she has been painting her own identity.[7]

The music of the spheres still echoes

If you’re anything like me, you may look at each of these moments of wonder and see them as evidence. When you marvel at a Van Gogh landscape, or at an act of deep sacrifice toward you by someone you love, or even when you experience your own epiphany and realize it is the opposite of self-made . . . you may experience in these moments a feeling of both wonder and rightness. Have you felt it? A feeling that this unexpected burst of wonder, this interruption to the up-and-down banality of your story is in fact more real, more true than all the rest? This is certainly what I feel, and it’s a rightness I’ve never experienced on the tougher edges of what many might call “real life,” meaning life’s betrayals, disappointments, and inadequacies. I’ve never once felt in one of those dark moments that yes, this is the way things are meant to be; if only this happened all the time. Yet I often do while in wonder.

Is this wishful thinking? Am I simply trying to stretch unexpected bliss into a place where it doesn’t belong—the rest of my life? Or are these moments of wonder evidence? Do we hear, in their silence, something like the music of the spheres, which may not have disappeared after all, and may be calling us to create new space where it can resound—our own lives?

As the composer Claude Debússy once wrote, “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence in between.”[8] For me, rediscovering silence across these many barriers, misuses, and especially through these seven uses, has also meant rediscovering more of the music within my own life.

Sound that goes on uninterrupted isn’t music; it’s exhaustion, which is exactly why workaholism or a life dominated by technology 11 hours a day feels that way. Sound that has only chaotic or jarring moments of silence is little better; it’s bewildering. But sound that alternates, in creative ways, in ways that don’t just repeat over and over but that explore new intervals, new experiences, that has the potential to become real music.

Silence is for you

It’s not only possible, but desirable, to pursue a life punctuated by silence. It doesn't need to sound or even feel grandiose. It might sound like a pause before you begin your day. It might sound like actually listening for the first time in your life, listening to another human the way you would feel honored to be listened to. It might sound like intentionally painting white space into your day, giving space for your work to develop or for your thoughts to defrag. It might sound like a realization that the answer you’ve been waiting for is the one you already have. Or the sound of silence where previously you would have said or typed things you’d only regret. It might sound like silent mode, actual swaths of time and space where you’re able again to enjoy human contact, uninterrupted by bloops and dings. It might sound like rest, portable calm, either as a deep breath in the middle of a tough day, or a sabbatical you’ve planned just because. It might sound like waiting, that Christmas Eve feeling returned to you as you experience a story loop that’s nearly about to close. Or it might sound like wonder, that breathless awe as you experience the undeserved, the too much that is somehow also just right.

You can imagine what it might sound like to have these silences sprinkled meaningfully throughout your life. You can do more than just imagine it; you can practice it. Start wherever you like. Start with whatever use of silence sounds right to you next. You may not know the tune yet, but you’ll recognize it once you’re through the first or second verse. You may even recognize yourself in it.

The silence is calling to you. It knows your name. It knows who you were, and who you are, and the person you’re becoming. “Come back,” it calls. “I remember you. Come and find yourself here.”

[1] A super cut on the “Spielberg Face” can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQqAbQoJGKk.

[2] The charmed tents in the Harry Potter books are discussed here: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Charmed_Tent.

[3] T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land can be read at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land.

[4] An overview of the philosophical idea of the sublime can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(philosophy).

[5] The broader definitions of epiphany are presented here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epiphany and the Feast of Epiphany is given an overview here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(holiday).

[6] A super cut of epiphanies in the television show House, M.D. can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwGxtk6I2iY.

[7] This scene from the film Tangled can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Xco4S4ph0.

[8] Claude Debussy’s quote on music as being the spaces between notes can be found at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Claude_Debussy.

Selah

Take a few minutes in silence and consider: where did you experience your last three moments of wonder? In harmony with someone you love? At an art gallery? In a favorite part of nature?

Now, make a decision. Where would you like to be open to wonder next? And how might you prepare yourself? For instance, would it help if you planned a trip ? A conversation? Or a gift? 

The silence of wonder can’t be staged or chosen in advance, like many of these others can be, but that shouldn’t keep you from exercising the muscle. When in doubt, practice gratitude: it uses nearly the same set of muscles as wonder.

Your Turn

Life isn’t meant to be all doldrums and banality. Every tree is designed with both functionality and beauty in mind, and so is every person. Here are some ways you can practice the use of silence as wonder:

●      Take a few minutes to journal. Ask yourself, What moments in my life do I remember being in awe, in a state of wonder? Write about them, with as much detail as you remember.

●      Where is a location where you’ve experienced wonder? For instance, it might be an art gallery, a particular location in nature, an especially majestic building, or a restaurant. Schedule some time to revisit that location, soon—or perhaps a similar place you’ve never visited before. Spend some time in silence when you get there, savoring.

●      Plan a microadventure in the city where you live.[1] Determine in advance to spend some time in silent wonder. Pretend you’re not a native but are exploring an exotic new place.

●      What are some things or people in your life that you’re most thankful for? Spend some time journaling about one of them right now. Or one a week, for that matter! If it’s a person, or if that thing was given to you by a person, practice gratitude by writing a thank-you note or calling that person to thank them, specifically. This too will help you get in touch with your sense of wonder.

●      Find one thing every day to wonder at. Stop and stare at it, and smile, like a holy fool.

[1] The idea of “microadventures” was introduced by explorer Alistair Humphreys. More can be found here: https://www.alastairhumphreys.com/microadventure-ideas/.