Noise

I’ve been doing a lot of work travel lately.  Before flying, I made sure that my over-ear headphones were all charged up and ready to go.  Airplanes are very noisy.  I live along one of the approach routes to one of the busiest airports in the world, and I can hear planes descending through about 15,000 feet: still very far away in actual terms.  So when I’m sitting in a window seat just a few yards from one of those jet engines, I want to make sure that my noise-cancelling headphones are in good working order.

I have noticed that headphones and earbuds have become pretty ubiquitous, not just in airports, but everywhere.  I see people shopping with headphones.  I see families eating at restaurants with one or more people at the table wearing headphones.  Yesterday I saw someone paddleboarding with AirPods in.  That’s hundreds of dollars of technology that can’t survive a fall into the lake.  I have done a good deal of hiking and trail running, and I have seen countless hikers and runners out in the woods wearing headphones.

I should probably give some context here.  I am a music fanatic.  I want music most of the time.  When the first Walkmans came out when I was in high school, I was very excited.  I had a friend with one, and he would loan it to me to use on long bike rides.  I could not believe that I could listen to my favorite music while riding my bike!  When I got my first car with a CD player, I was even more excited: I could listen to music that actually sounded pretty good while driving.  And I still love that.

But in some important ways, I have changed.  I would never listen to music on a bike ride.  On road rides, I want to be able to hear cars coming.  On mountain bike rides, I want to experience the sounds of the forest or fields around me.  It’s the same when I’m hiking, or even just taking a walk:  I want to be aware of what’s going on around me, and I savor the sounds of wild (or even less-tame) places.

We live in a noisy world.  Whether it’s the sound of jet engines or the low-frequency rumble of highway traffic, there’s always something to break the silence.  Restaurants and bars have televisions on all the time.  There is music coming through the speakers in the ceilings of these establishments, but I can never figure out why, since all that can be heard is the bass line and the drums.  What’s the point?

We take the noise into our homes, too.  I know people who always have their televisions on.  And now we’re taking our headphones out into the world, and even into our social interactions.  We may be screening out some external noise, but we’re doing it by bringing along our own portable noises. 

So much of our cultural noise is also impregnated with messages.  It’s noise that seeks to form our ways of thinking and speaking.  The unending news cycle, talk shows, and social media are not neutral bearers of words.  And now our phones, which are with us everywhere, are being used to add to the messaging.  We get a lot of unwanted text messages and junk emails.  Each one seeks to change our behavior in some way, usually by urging us to buy stuff or to vote in a certain way.

And yet we are afraid of being in silence.  It leaves us alone with our thoughts.  For many of us, thoughts are our own source of inescapable noise.  This is one of the many benefits of liturgical prayer or of any prayer which uses pre-set forms: it channels our thoughts and words into a healthful pattern, and implants in our noisy heads an antidote to the internal noise.  It gives us a message that is actually beneficial to us.

But we need silence in our lives.  We need time when we are still and quiet, when we are not distracted.  It is in stillness and in silence that God characteristically speaks to us.  He is not accustomed to shouting over the noise, or to wrenching our attention away from entertainments and distractions.  

I’ve always loved the scene in I Kings 19 when Elijah encounters God.  He has fled for his life into the wilderness.  He is sullen and depressed.  In this quiet place in the wilderness God appears to Elijah.  He makes the prophet to stand on a mountain, and a great, strong wind comes.  This is not just a storm, or even a hurricane, but a wind that breaks rocks.  But, we are told, the Lord was not in the wind.  Next came an earthquake, which of course is also noisy and powerful.  But we are told that the Lord was not in the earthquake.  Then there was a fire, which of course has a voice all its own; when a fire is large, it roars.  But, we are told, the Lord was not in the fire.

After all of these noisy and powerful manifestations, there was “a still small voice” (v. 12).  And in this voice God speaks to Elijah.  This is the same voice that speaks through the psalmist, saying to us, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).  Stillness, lack of distraction, is essential to the spiritual life.  Stillness includes internal as well as external noise.  In fact, external noise would not be so distracting to us if we weren’t already distracted internally.  A quiet mind can remain undisturbed by external noise, but a noisy mind is never undisturbed.

We have to learn how to be still.  We have to learn how to step away from noise and how to deal with internal noise.  Distraction is deadly to the life of prayer, so the effort is worth it.  But what can we do?  

Begin where you are.  This is an important basic principle in the spiritual life.  There are no preparations to be made; there are no prerequisites.  We just have to begin.  Early morning may be a good time to try and be still, because for many of us this is the time before the external demands begin.  The phone is quiet.  People are asleep.  This is a great time to sit quietly.  But any time may do.

The goal, however, is not silence as an end in itself, though even that can be beneficial in our hyperactive and anxious culture.  The goal is to remove distractions so that we can give our attention to God.  The goal is to take this time to pray and to fill our minds with God.  It is helpful to have some orthodox material to read and to think about.  This kind of material can often provide a scaffolding for prayer.  Books of prayers, and especially the Prayer Book, can be of help here, too.  

Take time to feed your faith.  This requires at least some modicum of stillness, some freedom from distraction.  Our minds will still compete with our attempts to pray and to consider the truths of the Faith, but over time, the habit of stillness will help us gain control over our unruly and distracting thoughts.  Not so that we can empty our minds, but so that we can fill them with God.

As a final suggestion, I will say that it is very helpful to have an icon of Our Lord upon which to focus while we are dealing with distractions and trying to pray and to be still.  I keep a small icon, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, in my work bag.  It’s easy to take out and to provide an object of focus.  I keep a photo of the same icon on my phone, so that it is almost always accessible.  

Stillness is indispensable.  As with everything that is important in the spiritual life, we cannot achieve it on our own, but we can create conditions in which God will help us to be still.  We can tune out the noise.  And that is something for which we can really be thankful!