We are threatened by dangerous noise pollution. The noise virus is invading us. We only have to visit our cities and wander through streets and squares to feel this parallel pandemic of noise and din. Markets, bars, discotheques, concerts, sporting events, cars, department stores… they are all noise factories. And even the digital world has its tentacles in homes and schools. The pandemic has also helped to fan the inextinguishable flames of noise.
And we pay a high price for this because “noise does no good; good does not make noise”. It not only empties the mind, it increases the feeling of fatigue, causes stress and anxiety, and even hinders and hinders human relationships. Nietzsche was right when he said that “it is difficult to live with men because it is difficult enough to make them silent”.
How difficult it is to get people to be silent, even when they are in church! And not just because the neighbour in the pew speaks louder than he should, but because a tide of chatter and chanting – more or less tiresome – reduces the moments of silence to a minimum.
Few know when to speak and when to be silent. Few know how to use silences well. Fewer are those who follow the basic rules of good conversation. Silence is a low consumption product. The Apocalypse already announced it: “There was silence in heaven for about half an hour” (8:1).
But not all silence is clean wheat. There is such a thing as infernal silence. It is the silence between people who live together without speaking to each other. It is a murderous silence, because it kills the other by ignoring him: If I do not speak to you, it is as if you did not exist. Even more: I don’t speak to you so that you don’t exist.
Here we are evidently talking about another silence: the one that is neither retaliation nor defence, but containment, recollection, reflection. The one that ensures that words do not sound hollow. The one that becomes a space where we learn to know ourselves. The one that puts us in communion with everyone and everything. The one that helps us to perceive the beauty of things. The one that sometimes brings echoes of familiar and beloved voices.
This silence has sound. It says more than a thousand words. Language is word and silence. “There is a time to be silent and a time to speak” (Eccl 3:7). We need oases of silence, at least for half an hour every day, to be at the side of others and of God, not in the din but in the stillness, and to be able to welcome what the prophet Elijah heard on Mount Horeb: “a light whisper” (1 Kgs 19:12), the mysterious divine voice.
Juan Carlos cmf
(PHOTO: Kristina Flour)
