I can’t hear a ‘still small voice’ when I won’t silence the world

I want to tell everybody to shut up. It’s not personal, though.

I don’t know whether to shout or whisper. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s an entire culture that I want to be quiet, not this person or that person.

I’m not angry with anybody. There’s nobody in particular who I want to shut up. It’s chaotic voices and public background music and blaring televisions. But it’s visual “noise,” too. It’s flickering screens of all kinds. It’s beeping phones and computers and mobile devices. It’s constant notifications.

It’s a culture that demands my attention and won’t leave me alone.

When I’m honest with myself, though, I realize that I’m the problem. I have the ability to shut this cacophony off at any time. But I refuse to take control of my life and my environment. I think I can be the master of my media culture.

I’m so addicted to what has come to seem normal that I’m like an alcoholic who thinks he can have just one drink. Or maybe two.

But in the rare moments when I can listen to my own spirit, I know I’m making this way too complicated. It’s not about the noise and the screens and the notifications.

It’s about silence. I desperately need to find silence for my heart and my mind — so I can hear the still small voice that whispers truth and love and wisdom when I’m quiet enough to hear it.

This isn’t a new discovery for me.

For the last 15 years or so, I keep thinking about it and writing about it, but I never seem to do anything to actually change my life.

Every time I push against the culture — and try to find the silence I need — I find a slightly healthier mental space in which to live. But then I get mentally lazy. I start wondering about the chaotic world I’ve left behind. I think I can imbibe the culture in moderation. Surely a little bit won’t hurt. And before I know it, I’m immersed in a culture that takes so much and gives me so little.

So I end up circling back to here, trying to figure out how to get it right.

The longer I live, the more I understand some traditional monastic practices — such as silence — that once seemed inexplicable.

I’m also understanding why some groups — such as the Amish — take steps to avoid many technological changes. I don’t want to be a monk. I don’t want to be Amish. But I understand where some of their core practices came from — and I understand how I could benefit from being more like them in some ways.

When I first ran across the idea of monastic silence, I found it odd. I was young enough that I still saw the world in terms of value being added by the addition of information. What possible good could come from simply being quiet? It made no sense to my immature mind.

The longer I live, the more I understand that value is often added by silencing things that shouldn’t be there. I’ve experienced so much noise and distraction that I find myself longing for silence.

I find myself thinking about monasteries of the past — before electricity and radios and smartphones and a million other modern conveniences — and imagining how appealing that silence must have been.

Maybe the silence and the lack of stimulation — and the devotion to worship and prayer — wouldn’t be the boring life we imagine. Maybe the tradeoff gave those people a life far richer than the chaos that’s around me every day in modern life.

There’s a Catholic monastery between my house and my office that has a chapel where I sometimes stop to pray. Outside the entrance to the chapel is a simple sign — the one you see above — that instructs those who enter to observe silence.

When I’m in that chapel, I can hear myself think in the silence. I can be quiet for an hour and take the time to listen for a God who I’m often too distracted to hear.

When I’m there, I appreciate the silence. I don’t need more entertainment. I don’t need more theological instruction. I don’t need greeters to slap my back and shake my hand.

I find tremendous value in the silence there. I’m not a Catholic, but I think the rest of my fellow Christians could learn a lot from the monastic tradition and from the value that many Catholics have traditionally given to silence.

When I’m in that silent chapel, my spirit is enriched. My mind grows quieter. My heart is lighter and happier.

And then I walk out to my car and drive right back to the chaotic world that drowns out the voice I need to hear and deadens my senses.

I don’t want to become a monk. I don’t even want to become a hermit. But I have to find a realistic way to silence the noise around me.

I don’t need more information or entertainment. I need silence.

Note: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the issue of distractions and why we need silence in our lives. Here’s another piece I wrote on the subject about four months ago from a slightly different angle.