“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.”  ~Isaiah 30:15

Silence. I used to crave it. I could walk for hours enrapt in its immensity; comforted by its softness as the chaos of the world swirled around me. Sometimes my thoughts would speak to me and sometimes I thought of nothing. It was my time to ponder and wonder with God. It was my escape – until Mom and Dad died.

I used to have wonderful conversations with my father on the other side of the state during my evening walks. My dad was not always the best conversationalist as he always had something to say and wouldn’t let me finish my portion of the conversation before moving on (a trait, I hate to admit, I have inherited), but for the most part, after an evening walk and talk with Dad, I usually felt like most things in this chaotic world were going to be alright and I felt infinitely wiser.

In the months following my parent’s deaths, silence became unbearable for me. It reflected far too intensely the emptiness that welled in my heart. And so, I did everything I could to avoid it. On my walks I became the annoying little sister who called her brother every night – and when I realized that wasn’t going to do much for our relationship, I searched, sometimes in vain, for anyone to talk to – to keep the silence at bay. Then I turned to listening to newscasts and podcasts – anything to break the silence and make me feel like someone was talking to me – because I couldn’t bear the depths my own thoughts would drive me.

I am a little late to the technology game. For the longest time, my cellphone was just that – a phone the size of an extremely large cell, used to communicate when I wanted to communicate. I live my life through a camera lens so when I discovered cameras that also functioned as phones I made the huge leap and upgraded to a 32-gigabyte photographic phenom that also made phone calls and sent text messages – as many as I wanted!! It also came with all these nifty things called apps. For years I never paid much attention to these revolutionary gizmos, even as apps began taking over the world, doing things instantly for us mere humans who used to be able to do things like: add and subtract in our heads or at least on our fingers, read books that we held in our hands and actually turned pages, find places on a map, feel for a pulse, and order pizza. I even have an app now that tells me how many miles I ran at what pace and how many of those pizza calories I burned. If I want, I can send my numbers into the app unified world and race and pace against the best, but I haven’t quite gone there yet. I know there are a bazillion more functions of life that apps now perform – I just saw an ad for whole house monitoring and I seriously considered getting the new door lock app so I don’t have to remember my house key, but hey, like I said I am new to this game.

But back to the point of this story… see apps have a way of distracting – even me!

These handy apps open up the wonderful world of podcasts and books that can be read to you. With apps, your smarter-than-you phone also accesses the world wide web so you basically have the whole world in your hand – beckoning you to learn more, search for more, buy more, listen more, and with social media you can always know more about every piece of minutiae happening in everyone’s life 24 -7 – all in the palm of your hand.

For those of us living insanely busy lives these apps with their lure of instant connectivity are wonderful conveniences. In the last month alone, I was able to listen to 19 theology lectures and 8 round-table discussions on the New Testament, countless newscasts and political commentaries, and a few symphony concerts for good measure – all while I walked or ran. This was on top of the 4 hours of actual textbook reading I was doing on an almost nightly basis, my 8-hour work day 5 days a week, and weekly after work meetings with their various assignments. For a while I was feeling pretty high on my intelligent horse named Audie (as in audio – get it?). Not only was I getting my exercise but I was filling my brain with everything I wanted to know and more and getting so much done!

But there was a problem.

I started to notice how anxious and irritable I was becoming. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t find words anymore. I couldn’t remember what I had read. I was re-reading chapters and irking myself at the time wasted.  Frightening thoughts started to come to mind –  I had just watched my dad succumb to dementia (horrid thoughts are always the first to come, you know) – what was wrong with me?

The answer was actually pretty straight forward –  I had become too connected – to everything but me and my God. My rhythm of life had been invaded by apps that quenched my need to accomplish far more than truly possible – for me at least. Before I invited technology to come along, I used to feel a bit selfish and underachievement oriented allowing a few hours each day for my meditative morning runs and evening walks. I thought I should be studying and filling my head with lectures and learning new things. Ironically the more time that I ceded to those active-mind activities –  the duller I became spiritually and intellectually.

This constant activity of the mind has a name most of us in the modern working world have grown accustomed to claiming as an asset. Multi-tasking may be a key skill to highlight on your resume, but it is not, according to scientific studies, beneficial to productivity. Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT says that our brains are “not wired to multitask well… When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so.”

Multitasking also increases the production of the stress hormones cortisol and the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline. Basically, you are overstimulating your brain and the result is not what you are aiming for by trying to focus on too many things at once: mental fog or scrambled thinking. THAT would explain my list of distressing symptoms.

The mind needs space to process all the information we are putting into it and the spirit needs rest to prevent us from burning out, going into overload, and losing touch with ourselves and the matters that God intends us to focus on.

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”   ~Mark 1:35

Even Jesus knew this. In Mark, the shortest Gospel in the Bible, I counted 9 instances of Jesus intentionally seeking out solitude and quiet to pray. I would have to say that Jesus had a lot more on his plate than I do right now and if he saw fit to make solitude and quiet a part of his daily regiment, then I certainly can to.

I must confess, the addiction to connectivity and constant “learning” has been a hard one to break. I have found a bridge though, that may lead me to a higher plain of thinking. Not every walk or run is accompanied by sounds other than the rustle of the trees, my footsteps, or bird song, but nothing can compare to a run in the countryside with Vivaldi as the soundtrack. No words to listen to or think about, just soaring movements of music that lift me out of the here and now, take my mind to a place of rest and refreshment, and lighten my step. I know Jesus didn’t have background music for his times with God, but I am pretty sure God gave us this wonderful gift of music for a reason and I intend to relish in it. I can back the benefits of studying and working to classical music up with scientific studies as well, but who needs to when all you have to do is download a music app and select classical for your listening pleasure. Trust me on this.  Respighi’s The Pines of Rome will keep your eyes open and the words on the page flowing.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.”   ~Psalm 23:1-3

I encourage everyone to tune out the world and tune into you for a few minutes or a few hours a day – whatever it takes. A set time with silence and solitude makes the chaos of the world more bearable.

In the past few weeks I have felt brave enough to seek silence again. I have listened to the rain fall on the leaves and the wind rush through the trees. I have listened to birds serenade and screech.  I have let my thoughts go where they would – I got lost in them – I cried- I breathed – and I began to make peace with the emptiness inside me. Silence brought me to that peace. Silence has made me stronger.

Hello Silence, my old friend.