Friday, October 3, 2008

Silence

I remember, last summer at band camp, the conductor was trying to explain something to us...an amazing something. She tried to explain silence. The fact is, we can never truely EVER experience silence on this earth. We can still hear the world around us, the lights buzzing above us, and even our own breathing. We will never experience silence, but we can come pretty close. At least, we can come close if we're comparing almost-silence to the world around us. I mean, we ALWAYS hear noise. We can't avoid a lot of it. The fact is, half the time we don't notice it. I mean, I'm one of those people who constantly has to listen to music. It's just how I work. But, today in chapel, we touched on this topic. We touched on the idea of silence. It was really ironic, how it happened. We started chapel with music, and halfway through the second song, I totally lost my voice. I mean, I've been kinda sick for a while, and today I was coughing a lot, but I didn't think that I was sick enough to lose my voice. But I did. Then, it turned out, the guest speeker who was gonna come, was sick, so they had gotten a video for us to watch. It was probably totally random, but I've got a youtube link to ithttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzpF2aCZN-8
Anyways, we watched that and it was depressing. All through that video about silence, people were whispering, tapping their feet, doing ANYTHING to avoid silence. It's like people are afraid of it. Afraid of silence. It's weird, really, how people don't like silence. I like it, mostly because I greatly dislike noise. But here's what I think. I think that we don't need silence to experience it...I think that all it takes is the ability to block out the rest of the world, with something other than just a louder sound, like a mp3. Because you know what? If we want to hear God, we need silence. It's like in band class...our band teacher wont talk til everyone is quiet. God's like that, cuz He isn't gonna raise His voice, He's just gonna talk however loud He wants and it's our responsibility to be quiet enough to listen. So maybe we should try something....maybe we should try to be quiet...you know, like right before you wake up, how you are totally silent, not even thinking anything. Just a moment of real silence, is worth a day of noise.

3 comments:

J said...

In church once we were watching this conference where they had these guest speakers talking about stuff and one of them talked about silence and God. It was pretty sparky, what he said about us having to be quiet and listen, and even doing something really uplifting like singing or even listening to that conference :) could get in the way.
So ya, silence is good :)
I tap hands and feet heaps and stuff, but it's not cos I'm afraid of silence, I'm probably just hyperactive. :) I listen to music a lot, and always have some song thru my head. But occasionally, I can get that sense of quiet. Not often at all tho. But it's good :)

Anonymous said...

We watched this at church camp this summer
we had all thought the projector broke...it was kind of funny, but nobody made noise, that was weird
All we could hear were birds...and the air conditioning
But it was awesome

Anonymous said...

Silence is an odd concept. You're right. No one, and I mean no one, on this planet has ever truly heard Silence. Makes you think, huh? That being said, Silence is just a concept, an idea. Not real. We think Silence is part of everyday life. The woods are Silent. Night is Silent. Being alone is Silent. But none of those things are really, truly Silent. Silence? No such thing.