The Sounds Within the Silence

"Silence is a true friend who will never betray you." Confucius

"And Silence, like a poultice, comes To heal the blows of sound." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Good Morning from Amoy!
Back during grad school, while dating Susan Marie, she thought it was odd that, on July 4th, while she spent the time with friends at a beach, I headed the quiet of a Benedictine monastery in the high desert of Valyermo, California (just north of Los Angeles). Valyermo was special to me because it was started by monks who had to leave China in the 1950s--people like Thaddeus Yang. And I also appreciated the quiet, and the Benedictine Rule of Silence.

While holidays are loud and celebratory for many people but I choose to celebrate quietly. In this day of Walkmans and Ipods, in an era in which heavy metal has replaced Muzak in elevators and grocery stores, the sweetest music is silence, which calms and heals, and allows me to hear and heed that still, small voice. One of my favorite memories is of the silence I heard, and felt, and breathed, on the high Tibetan plateau as our family made our 40,000 Km. drive around China in 1994 (see, "Tibet or Bust"). I won't be driving to Tibet again anytime soon, but I do make sure that I savor a little silence every morning, right here at home in Amoy.

This morning, I read F.B. Meyer's "Daily Homily," and his excellent take on Prov. 17:27 "He that spares his words has knowledge." I can do no better than quote the entire passage:

From Meyer...
"The A.V. and R.V. marg. suggest a better rendering, "He that hath knowledge spareth his words." It is a wise thing to say as little as possible to man, and as much as possible to God. The ultimate test of friendship has always seemed to be in the ability of true friends to be silent in each other's presence. In silence we best may open the heart to receive the infillings of the Divine Spirit. When people are always to one another, even though talk about God, they are liable to lose the first fresh sense of God's presense.

"Ordinary conversation greatly weakens character. It is like the perpetual running of a tap which inevitably empties the cistern. It seems to be disastrous when the whole of a summer holiday is spent in contact with friends, however dear, who leave no time for the communing of the soul with itself, nature, and God. We cannot be perpetually in society, speaking to the nearest and dearest, without saying things which will afterwards cause us regret. We shall have spoken too much of ourselves, or too little of Christ, or too much about others; or we shall have allowed the things of the world and sense to bulk too larely. Besides, it is only in silence and thought that our deepest life matures, or the impressions of eternity are realized. If we are always talking, we give no opportunity for the ripening of the soul. Nothing makes the soul more fruitful than to leave it fallow. Who would pick a crop of fruit when first it began to appear on the trees? Live deep. Speak as little as you may. Be slow to speak, and swift to hear."