Sunday, October 11th 2009

10:10 PM

Silence

There is in this age very little understanding of the true nature of silence or its right use. The world gets steadily noisier and more distracting, and people throw themselves into the noise and enjoy it and add to it, and so become incapable of sustained attention to either thought or prayer. So we find people living with the wireless [radio] perpetually turned on, not because they want to listen to it, for it often impedes conversation, but merely because they cannot bear to be quiet even for a moment. All this makes for shallowness of soul and weakness of spiritual apprehension. Religion comes to mean nothing, because the faculties by which God is known have been whirred and buzzed and shouted out of existence.

Noise is a necessity to our present civilization, but it is an unfortunate necessity, and if the spiritual life is to be cultivated at all it is necessary to oppose to it the love of interior silence; the Christian should never let himself go and become immersed in the noise of the age... Attention to God demands interior silence, and those who live it find Him.

F. P. Harton, The Elements of the Spiritual Life  [1932]
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