The Nature of Silence

    The Lord stands before Pilate. The Lord stands before His accusers in the Sanhedrin. The Lord stands before Herod. He is silent. "Like a lamb before his shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth." Yes, indeed, the closest thing to this silence that we experience in this world is the silence of nature. It is a silence without hostility, nor sorrow. It is a silence full of love. Or, for that very silence, is not "peace" a better word. The forest is alive with the sounds of singing birds, along with the sound of the wind as it moves through the thick canopy. Yet none of those songs or gusts breaks the silence. No, rather, they are part of the silence, this special silence that attests to the truth of being. I count it as one of the greatest gifts that I learned to love this silence. From an early age, I can recall feeling at one with it. My own sounds too were part of it—treading a hiking path through a pine forest, with the sound of the cones crunching beneath my feet. Man is not alien to the silence of nature (the truth of being). No, he can even be part of it, if God wills. Sound does not break the silence. It is part of it. The only thing that would shatter the silence is the presence of untruth. Falsehood would shatter the silence. God has given me the privilege of being a part of the truth of being. I am also the only one who can dash it in pieces and tread it underfoot like the pine cones. It is my awesome, and fatal, choice.

    The silence of nature is the mother of prayer. What could be more natural than union with God? Yes, it is supernatural, but nature was made for super-nature. Our great teacher is experience, in this matter, as in so many others. When we remove from our hearts everything that breaks the silence, all those things that shatter the truth of being, then we are open to God. We recognize the beauty of nature, this truth of being, and at the same time we recognize the defect of our own nature. Being in silence, without hostility and sorrow, reveals to us clearly the damage within us. In my distant memories, I recall that silence was a punishment. It was banishment—being set apart for having been bad. It was an agony and an eternity, even five minutes of such exile. Yet, these little childish banishments taught me nothing of silence. They taught me to be quiet. Only if we are quiet can we hear the silence.

    This is all so much nonsense, then! These words mean nothing. What can "silence" mean if it includes sound? No, no, it is simple. Silence is what is natural. It is truth.