Day 2. Last night I realized that forty days is also the number of days in Lent. What if instead of giving up chocolate, liquor, shopping for new shoes, or sex...we simply did away with distraction, noise, frenzy, chaos, restlessness, and angst?
There is, of course, a place for noise in our lives. There is a place for roaring with laughter and crying out in pain, for shouting at a baseball game and talking with our friends, for singing hymns and saying prayers, for orchestras and applause. But, as Pico Iyer wrote several years ago in an essay in Time magazine, "if noise is the signature tune of the world, silence is the music of the other world, the closest thing we know to the harmony of the spheres." He goes on to say that it is no coincidence that places of worship are places of silence, where we can listen to something behind the clamor of the world. Silence is the tribute we pay to holiness; we slip off words when we enter a sacred space, just as we slip off shoes. - Galen Guengerich, "Wide Margins"
(It's just forty days, you can always revert back later.) What if we vowed to spend a wee bit of time each day being still, even if that's in the comfort of our daily commute? In that stillness, we hear the deeper softer voice of the yes! burning inside ourselves. In Stephen Covey's First Things First chapter on The Passion of Vision he reminds us decision-making can be simple when there is clarity: "It's easy to say "no!" when there's a deeper "yes!" burning inside." (via Rosa Say's blog).
Claude Debussy once remarked that music is the stuff between the notes. He seemed to be saying that almost anyone can eventually get the notes right, more or less. The notes only become music, however, when you also get the silences right on either side. The margins matter: the silence and the open space are what gives meaning to everything else...
Thomas Edison, who was left partially deaf by a childhood inflammation of the mastoid bones in his ear. His biographers agree that Edison throughout his life embraced the world of silence, reveled in its space, and allowed it to give him strength. Perhaps as much as anyone ever has, Edison recognized silence as the territory of inspiration. His deafness was like an auditory veil, separating him from the distractions of the world, allowing him to focus on what he called his business: thinking.
As Slouka notes [referencing May 1999 issue Harper's magazine "Listening for Silence" by Mark Slouka], there is an obvious irony here, that a man so indebted to silence should do more than any other to fill the world with noise. Even so, in June 1911, hard at work on what would eventually become the disk phonograph, Edison hired a pianist to play for him as loudly as possible the world's entire repertoire of waltzes. And there, in the drawing room of his home, out of sudden desperation for the thing he had missed, the sixty-four-year old Edison got down on his hands and knees and bit into the piano's wood, the better to hear its vibrations.
The music was so compelling when it came to Edison because the margins of silence in his life were so wide. That's the point. The spirit can move only into open spaces that await filling, into a longing that awaits satisfaction. Without silence, there can be no music. Without empty places, we have no room to be filled with good things. Our task is to live with wide margins, amply surrounded by empty places and silent spaces. - Galen Guengerich, "Wide Margins"
Related: If Not on the Day I Die, Then Not Today
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. - Aldous Huxley
The ancient Masters were profound and subtle.
Their wisdom was unfathomable.
There is no way to describe it;
all we can describe is their appearance.They were careful
as someone crossing an iced-over stream.
Alert as a warrior in enemy territory.
Courteous as a guest.
Fluid as melting ice.
Shapeable as a block of wood.
Receptive as a valley.
Clear as a glass of water.Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself? - Tao Te Ching
Evelyn, I don't observe Lent, but I think this is a fantastic idea for anyone. Chaos, stress, noise and anxiety are every bit the daily bile we feed into our lives. The value of silence and solitude is realized by few. I aim to work on this, thanks for the reminder and nudge.
Posted by: Lisa Haneberg | Oct 20, 2005 at 10:32 PM