On Silence

...I was thinking about silence the other day, half-asleep in the back of a van and listening to the indistinct voices around me.

It seemed to me that we in America are dependant on noise. We wake up to a radio-alarm clock, drive to work with the radio on, watch the people on the side of the road running in slow-motion with their headphones on, listen to our favorite CD's at work, come home and turn on the stereo or TV, fall asleep to a few notes of easy-listening. Over the course of twenty-four hours we hear country singers, pop singers, and mood music; we hear news reports, we hear to football games; we hear advertisements and commercials and endorsements.

Why?

I'm not sure I know. I think it's got something to do with the fact that if you're listening to something, your mind has a place to wander to. Your brain has something to feed on, somewhere to go, a stimulus to observe. What happens when the music fades, the radio dies, the TV in the next room is turned out with the lights?

Maybe it's just me. But when that happens, I'm left alone with my thoughts. There's no music telling me how to feel, no announcer telling me what to think, no salesman telling me what to buy. And I don't like it. It's uncomfortable not having anything to think about, nowhere to hide my thoughts. Because as soon as my mind has some time to itself, it starts doing things I don't like, thinking about things that I don't want to think about. Have you done your homework, do you have anything better you could be doing right now, when's the last time you prayed? Did you mean what you said yesterday, are you saying anything today, will you say it tomorrow?

I think that the reason we have such a deep desire to surround ourselves with music and voices and whitenoise is that it simply helps us hide from our own pure, uninfluenced thoughts. And honestly, that's not a good thing. God knew what He was saying when he said that we should "be still and know." Without the influence of music or even sound, our minds stand completely naked before Him, unfettered by anything around us, free of thoughts and feelings that don't come from anywhere but within. Why do we close our eyes when we pray? To shut out the visible world, because we realize that focusing on God is hard when there are so many other things that our brain wants to think about if it could only see them. I'm trying something new. I'm shutting off all my music, all my noise before I talk to God, because when He speaks, I don't want anything to drown out His voice.

Don't get me wrong. I love music. I love playing it and listening to it. And I think that it's awesome, a gift from our Creator to use for His glory. In a lot of cases, it can serve as a focal point, helping to draw my thoughts to Him. But in some cases, it's not. It can be an impediment, putting feelings there that aren't real and filling my head with thoughts that aren't mine. I don't want to be like that... when I stand before God, I want it to be me, just me, alone in His presence with nothing between me and Him but His awesome and unfanthomable love.