Be Still and Know
I have been a big fan of audiobooks and podcasts for many years. I started listening when I was doing a great deal of driving for my job. It helped calm me, helped pass the time, and reduced the stress of traffic. Traffic jams became less of a hassle, and more of an opportunity to listen to the next chapter, to escape into another reality. Even once my schedule slowed ( (and especially in the past year as I was home A LOT!) I continued to listen to audiobooks. While doing housework, while gardening, taking my neighborhood walks, driving to visit my daughters or friends who are far removed from my home - I listen to audiobooks and enjoy the time travel, the adventure, the history. It can be addicting, this constant outside narrative, reminiscent of being read to as a child. I guess we never outgrow the love of story, the voice of another giving voice to our fears and joys, our thirst for adventure, our need to know that usually, it all works out in the end.
But in recent months, I’ve discovered the quiet, the whispers of my heart, the sighing soft, deep in my bones -and my addiction has shifted. Or perhaps I’ve simply grown up. Maybe I’ve outgrown the need for another’s story, and have grown up enough to listen to my own.
To hear my own story, to listen to it fully, I’ve come to see the value of quiet. The need for silence. I’ve become captivated by the lack of sound, the absence of noise. I am awed by the blessing of silence, yearning for the quiet, for the tranquility that descends like a blanket, a soothing silence that stills the soul.
“Be still and know that I am God”, (Psalm 46:10) says the psalmist. Long a favorite of mine, this verse has taken on a new depth of meaning. It has shifted my north toward a reality that I’m discovering to be real and true.
To be still, to be quiet. To enter into the silence so that we can know He is God.
True silence is hard to find in our world. There is noise everywhere we go. Even in a quiet seaside neighborhood, it can be difficult to find a lack of noise; trucks beeping as they back up; mowers whizzing, chainsaws grinding, cars and boats and trains and planes. Dogs barking. And often? The howling of the coyotes who frequent our woods and marsh at all hours of the evening and night. It is just so much background noise. Until it isn’t.
Entering into the silence isn’t easy for many. Years ago, I took a good friend of mine to a monastery for a weekend retreat, a place where I’d been many times, about two hours from our home. It was the place where I was first introduced to silence as an intentional discipline, where a “fast from speech” was practiced every day from 8:00 pm in the evening until after breakfast the next day (approximately 12 hours). The “Great Silence”, as it was called, was something that I reveled in. My friend? Not so much. She kept knocking on my door after lights were out, whispering loud, always having something she “just had” to tell me. We later laughed at just how badly she “did” silence. She simply could not keep quiet! And we accepted that about each other, my need for the quiet; her need for speech and sound. We recognized it was simply how we were.
When I’m still and quiet, I’ve come to see that silence teaches me things.
I’ve learned how unnecessary words often are to learn what the earth is trying to teach me. In silence, I breathe in the life of that which is surrounding me, and breathe out my cares and anxieties, reaching a tranquil balance that speech cannot hope to convey.
I’ve learned that being quiet allows me to really see what is around me, whether it is a beautiful hawk looking for breakfast of a morning, or the fat raccoon waddling along the edge of the yard, beginning its night-time foraging for dinner. I learn about me by actually seeing what is around me.
I’ve learned that silence leads me into my own thoughts, and I’ve learned that those thoughts should not be ignored; that paying attention to the whispers of my heart is more revealing of who and what I am than anything I can listen to “from out there”.
I’ve learned that much of what I think must be said, need not be said at all; that my words are often nothing more than my little-girl ego shouting aloud to be heard, to be noticed.
But perhaps, most importantly, I’ve learned that words are superfluous to prayer. Our heart already knows how to pray. In silence, in the quiet, our minds can reach into the depths of our soul, and there, connect with the Divine that exists around us and within us. God’s communication with us is often and most beautifully expressed in the entire universe that surrounds us each and every day. As Jesus said, “If you have ears to hear…” as if he knew we often simply aren’t listening.
Yes, we can read and pray and talk with God; He is always there to listen. But for us to really hear Him? Ah! It is our hearts and our souls who will hear His voice most clearly.
God will never require words to impart His wisdom and love. He is far more eloquent than words.
Just be still. And listen. And know.