Silence and its close ally stillness are paradoxical sources of life, beauty, and vibrancy. Br. David Steindl-Rast describes silence as something “not only as perceived by the ears, but also a quietness of the heart, a lucid stillness inside.” Amidst the demands of daily life, it’s easy to think that accessing this inner stillness can come only by way of a long retreat, vacation, or radical shift in our lives. And while retreats and holidays can certainly deliver a welcome reprieve, it’s only through daily practice that we can create and access the kind of silence Br. David is describing — a silence that is not so much a lack of sound as an inner quiet, not so much an absence of movement as a stillness in its midst.
If you’ve ever listened closely to the ocean’s tide, you know that there’s a brief and surprising quiet that lives just between the ebb and flow of each wave. It’s easy to miss because the waves breaking are both visually and audibly “louder,” but there it is, like the rest between notes, propelling life forward. There’s an invitation in that space, a mirroring of our very breath, to be still, to listen differently, to look around, to slow ourselves even while the waves, always, continue to crash.
As an orientation to life, grateful living invites us to expand our capacity to notice and appreciate what is available to us not only in the rich cacophony of life’s colors and sounds, but also in its silences and its stillness. Welcoming silence, it turns out, is actually an expansion of our awareness, not a diminishment. It’s another way of becoming more fully alive. The American theologian and civil rights activist Howard Thurman said it this way: “In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper in the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.”
To make our way with intention and agency, rather than simply being carried along on life’s currents, we should grab the life ring of silence and stillness — the daily opportunity to pause, look around, savor, and make meaning.
But it can be hard to hear this whisper. The volume of the world can be overwhelming, not only in sound but in activity, information, news, to-do lists, obligations, and necessities. There’s an old saying that one cannot live in the retreat house; most of us live in the noise, literal and figurative, of the world. To make our way with intention and agency, rather than simply being carried along on life’s currents, we should grab the life ring of silence and stillness — the daily opportunity to pause, look around, savor, and make meaning. The consistent cultivation of this kind of quiet is not a turning away from the world but a way of equipping ourselves to remain engaged. Like our every breath, inner silence and stillness are always there, waiting for us to notice and remember that being fully alive depends on them.
