The Silence Created by God Comes in Two Halves. A Benedictine Oblate Blog.

After being in a mountain cabin for a week, I have had some rare times of complete silence, and I could sense that this type of silence comes in two halves. One half is quieting my own heart and mind. A prayer or the Glory Be, sheds the inner noise. I know this comes from God.

The second half is also created by God. The second part of silence I experienced became clear to me while sitting here in the evening and hearing only birds and wind in the trees that surround the cabin.

To me, I imagined that God may not want us to seek silence in a soundproof booth.

He himself has provided the second part of a complete silence for the human heart and mind. This is a silence that God intends to wrap us in. It is not a complete absence of sound, it is not sensory deprivation. It is the absence of manmade sounds, but as music is a movement through time, this second half of a full silence is almost soundless, but not completely.

God carries us through time with His sounds, a bird song, a falling twig, and the wind in the trees — a quiet sky.

With both halves of silence in place, I experienced the full silence offered by God — at least at this place along the narrow mountain road.