THE POWER OF SILENCE

"True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment."
- William Penn

Renewing a Forgotten Virtue
By Alex Green

What would you most like to leave to your kids some day? A house... a business... some money?

If so, there is plenty of good advice out there about what to do and how to do it. (A good starting point, in my view, is Warren Buffet’s suggestion to leave your children enough money so that they could do what they want, but not so much that they could do nothing.)
There are more important things we can leave them, however. Plato said, "Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence."
Reverence means understanding human limitations. It's a feeling of respect for what lies beyond our control: nature, truth, fate, death.

It's also an attitude of acceptance toward life and our fellow human beings, flawed as we may be. Reverence underlies the grace and civility that make life in society bearable and pleasant. It reminds us what's important, what's sacred, what's worth protecting.

Reverence is as old as civilization itself, perhaps older. Writing in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the Greek historian Thucydides called it a cardinal virtue, existing universally across all cultures.
Moreover, irreverence makes it difficult to respect those who are weaker: children, prisoners, the poor, the elderly.
Many equate reverence with religiosity. Yet this is not always the case.
In Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue, Paul Woodruff writes, "Reverence is not faith, because the faithful may hold their faith with arrogance and self-satisfaction, and the reverent may not know what to believe. ... If your form of worship or faith is reverent, so much the better. You know one place to look for reverence. But you should look further, so that you can see how you might share reverence with people who do not worship with you or share your faith."

Throughout history, religion and reverence have often gone their separate ways. Taken to extremes, religious beliefs sometimes engender just the opposite: intolerance, guilt, fear, ignorance, zealotry, and hatred.
In the West today, however, most of us live peaceably beside those with different beliefs. What the devout admire in other religions, however, is not faith, since they reject most of its content, but rather reverence, that universal sense of wonder, respect, and humility.

Some experience reverence in organized worship, in community with others. Others discover it outdoors, enjoying the glories of nature. Still others may experience it with music.
Handel's Messiah, Mendelssohn's St. Paul oratorio, Bach's Mass in B Minor, and many other classical and choral masterpieces were clearly inspired by a deep sense of reverence - and, centuries later, still bring that spirit to life.
Yet something else comes closer to capturing the true spirit of reverence: silence.
"Do you imagine the universe is agitated?" asked Lao Tzu a few thousand years ago. "Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question."

A quiet mind, freed from a noisy environment and the onslaught of continuous thought, has long been a signpost of spiritual development.
In Christianity and Judaism, there is the silence of contemplative prayer. In Islam, the Sufis wrote about the wisdom of finding silence within. Hinduism, the source of yoga, emphasizes the importance of silence for inner growth. Buddhists believe that silent meditation is the path to enlightenment. For Quakers, silence makes up much of the service, allowing for the development of heart and mind.
Secular philosophers and other writers have advocated its benefits, as well.
Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I like the silent church before the service begins better than any preaching."

Humanist Aldous Huxley observed, "Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture."
Claude Debussy even reminded listeners that music is found in the space between the notes. Avant-garde composer John Cage took this idea to an extreme. His composition 4'33" consists of just over four and a half minutes of complete silence. (To this day, it's the only piece I can play on the violin.)
Silence opens us to the experience of reverence. Yet many today lead noisier lives than ever. Some choose to live near busy highways and airports. Restaurants and retail stores blast rock and country music non-stop. A study conducted by Pennsylvania State University found that urban teenagers listen to four and a half hours of pop and rap music a day. In our homes, radio and television broadcasts are punctuated with a steady stream of commercial messages at trumped up volumes.
This creates frustration and anxiety, especially for innocent bystanders. In The Happiness Hypothesis, psychology professor Jonathan Haidt writes that "noise, especially noise that is variable or intermittent, interferes with concentration and increases stress. It's worth striving to remove sources of noise in your life."
Sensible advice. Yet Matthew Kelly believes there is another reason we choose noisy environments: Silence reveals our weaknesses to us, our shortcomings.

In The Rhythm of Life, Kelly writes, "In the silence, we see at one time the person we are and the person we are capable of becoming. ... It is precisely for this reason that we fill our lives with noise, to distract ourselves from the challenge to change."
We can fix this, however. We can hit the off button, walk outside, visit a chapel, or take a quiet drive in the country. If you really can't escape the barking dogs, screaming kids, or NFL football, do yourself a favor and buy a pair of noise-canceling headphones. (Trust me, they're worth it.)
A few days ago, I took my five-year-old son David on a hike up to Humpback Rocks, an outcropping about half a mile above the Blue Ridge Parkway that offers an awe-inspiring view of the Shenandoah Valley, especially near sunset.
As we neared the summit, I stopped. "Listen," I said. "What do you hear?"
He looked around the trail and up at the treetops. There was no traffic, no sound, not even the wind. He shrugged and said "Nothing."
"Isn't it great?" I asked.
He glanced up to make sure I wasn't kidding, then looked around again, listening.
"Yeah," he said, exhaling. "It is."