A6
Northeast Suburban Life
Life
August 25, 2010
Silence frightens but has so much to say
“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.” So stated Blaise Pascal, famed philosopher, scientist, mathematician and writer about the vastness of the universe. Notice it was not the sheer size of “these infinite
spaces” that amazed him. It was their silence that terrified him. The gaping stillness of a night sky can remind us of our human solitude. For so many, noise and busyness are familiar; solitude and silence frighten us.
Theologian Nicholas Lash writes, “I have a suspicion that one reason why some scientists seem so keen to suppose that somewhere, in some vastly distant region, there must be that which we could recognize as ‘living,’ and as
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capable of communic a t i n g with us … Meeting t h e m w o u l d give us company Father Lou a n d Guntzelman diminish our terriPerspectives fying isolation.” He could have a point. Our fear of silence and solitude is confirmed when we recall how even early Greeks and Romans populated the distant skies with spirits, deities and astrological animals. Horoscope readers today find solace in the belief that the stars and planets are really entities concerned about us and our fate. Why do we dislike silence so much? One reason is we fear looking at all that is within us. We’re masters at avoiding confrontation with who we really are and what’s going on in our depths. True, our advances in technology can be extremely helpful in conversing with another and transacting our businesses. But at other times technology is like the Trojan horse that delivered a hidden enemy within the camp. Technology has already given us multiple ways to avoid silence: radio, TV, computers, cell phones, internet, games, e-mails, text-messaging, etc. We can go to bed with music or TV and awake to
The gaping stillness of a night sky can remind us of our human solitude. For so many, noise and busyness are familiar; solitude and silence frighten us.
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our self, and with God. This apparently empty space of silence is actually indescribably full. Then it is that we discover that eloquent silence is not an absence, but a presence; not boring but refreshing; not stressful but serene. Author Pico Iyer describes this serenity found in silence: “Eloquent silence is that enchanted place where space is cleared, time subsides, and the horizon expands. “In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper than mere thought allows. In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.” As the heat and humidity moderate in late summer and autumn, nature calls us more insistently to come away for awhile from expressways, malls and crowds – and like the great host that she is – invites us to revel in her silence. Father Lou Guntzelman is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Contact him at columns@community press.com or P.O. Box 428541, Cincinnati, OH 45242.
the same. Want to avoid silence? There’s an app for that. An old paradoxical saying claims that the cure for loneliness is solitude. For when we have conquered solitude’s fear, we discover we are not alone. Bringing a temporary halt to our hurrying and doing permits us to tap into our conversations with ourselves within. Dr. James Hollis notes, “The chief pathology of our time is the capacity of the world to distract us from this conversation.” Psychological observations have proven that the three places we can come to know ourselves the best are marriage, psychotherapy and silence. Our first tries at bringing more silence into our lives can be agitating. We become anxious, feeling weird at doing this, and checking the time to see when our time is up so we can get on to better things. Actually, we have to go through the frightening silence to come to the eloquent silence. After working our way through the scary part of silence, we come to an inner place where the quality of the silence changes. In this more peaceful place we are mostly with
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