Today in class I was struck with the comments regarding silence. I would like to share a quote from a book I am quite fond of: Matthew Kelly's The Rhythm of Life.
Kelly explains, "I felt God inviting me into the classroom of silence...We live in a noisy world. People wake up to clock radios, listen to the news while they shower, watch television while they eat breakfast, get into the car and listen to the morning shows on the way to work, listen to music all day over the intercom, talk incessantly on the phone between any number of meetings...We need to stop the noise. Every thing great in history has arisen from silence...even great noise Beethoven and Mozart closed themselves off from the world and inhabited silent rooms for days at a time in order to hear things that no one else could hear".
I felt that this quote was quite appropriate regarding out discussion and upcoming viewing the the film involving the Carthusian monks, Into Great Silence. I am truly looking forward to viewing this film, which I feel will renew a sense of the silence I need to have within my own life. Matthew Kelly's book was especially helpful to me, as I try continually to find those moments of silence for personal prayer. Picard was right...silence has disappeared. It is continually filled with endless chatter and needless nothingness taken up space. Have you ever noticed how uncomfortable it would be if a professor showed up for class, and just sat there, staring at the class, not saying a word? We are uncomfortable with silence because we are no longer used to it.
The radio in Picard's writing is only one example of something that has filled the empty spaces with noise. Look at the cell phone. Now we cannot even drive without having a conversation with someone. Picard states it perfectly, with these technologies, "Everything is present, yet nothing is present". And so I ask, without the presence of the reality behind the noise, what is left for us?
We become totally different people, who no longer know the value of immersing ourselves in the classroom of silence.
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