This Thing Called Silence & Solitude

Sharpening the Mind, Soul, and Spirit

There is a time to be silent and there is a time to speak. Lord, Help me to know what time it is.

I love silence. Complete quiet. No talking. I didn’t realize how much I took pleasure in silence until one day, my husband and daughter were continuously talking. I was upstairs in the loft at my desk writing, and their constant chatter was like a severe rash of poison ivy climbing up my arm. Itching. Irritating. Please, please, go away.

Earlier that day, after they both had departed to school and work, I had spent the entire day in silence. No radio. No texting. No human interaction. I walked on the treadmill and read. I completed a 20-minute yoga session with the volume on mute. I read. I wrote. I journaled. When my daughter, came home she disappeared into her room to take a nap and complete homework. I started prepping for dinner. At five o’clock my husband called breaking my silence. He calls every day when he leaves work and gets in the car. We talk, sometimes reviewing the evening agenda.

However, on this one particular evening, I thought I had gone mad. I simply wanted silence. First, I chalked it up to my past. I’d been single for five years living as an empty nester before getting remarried. I had grown accustomed to a quiet place. Then I asked my two older daughters did we talk a lot when they were growing up. They reminded me we were all geeks: reading, watching TV, doing puzzles, helping their dad in the garden, or something that didn’t require a vast amount of excessive talking. My twenty-one-year-old reminded me we talked and caught up during meals at the kitchen table. We had a routine. My twenty-five-year-old said she remembered being in her room drawing. She needed a quiet space to focus on her art. This made sense; I was a stay at home mom developing my writing craft and managing a graphic design and freelance business. I too, needed silence and sometimes solitude.

Wole Soyinka is a poet and playwright. In 1986, he became the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I dug a little deeper because I’m all about knowing thyself (July 11 post). I recalled my own childhood. I was alone most of the time. I’m not going to share my story here, maybe in a broader framework—like memoir or autobiography. However, as a child I played cards with myself, I watched cartoons by myself, and I read the complete series of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. I was the type of child who played peacefully by herself. My mother could leave me in a room alone, and I entertained myself. I was born for not only silence but also solitude.

At the chatter of my husband and daughter, I failed to understand I had grown to a different level of silence. According to Anne D. LeClaire’s book Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence there are three levels of silence:

1. Easy silence without conscious thought or intention
2. Deliberate silence is a purposeful stillness, where one chooses not to speak and come to a place of reflective and centering thought.
3. Transcendence moving beneath thought

I was transitioning from easy silence to deliberate silence. I choose not to speak so I could reflect on self and center my thoughts. Additionally, I understood why my husband and daughter’s chatter was like poison ivy— irritating and itching. Deliberate silence needed to be paired with solitude. Silence was teaching me to listen, pay attention, and reflect instead of reacting. God had spent years pruning me to speak when circumstances demanded otherwise remain silent through the application of Ecclesiastes 3:1 and 3, “There is time for everything…a time to be silent and a time to speak” (NIV).  When I was in the presence of people who cared less for me, I had to keep quiet. When amongst gossipers, I had to learn to be silent. When God gave me an idea, I had to learn to stay silent. Solitude, on the other hand, would slow me down and help me connect with myself and others. Hence, I needed to incorporate more deliberate solitude and silence into my routine. And I had not yet learned that about myself; therefore, on this day the noise was bothersome.

In regards to silence, author, civil rights and women’s activist, Pearl Buck wrote: “Inside myself is a place where I live alone and where you renew your spring that never dries up.” Ester Buchholz notes in The Call of Solitude: Alonetime In A World of Attachment that for the artist “solitude is finding creativity and returning to the self.”

When it comes to solitude, the gospel writers recorded that Jesus slipped away from the large crowds to a secluded place to be alone, to reflect, and to pray. In Mark 6:31 he says to the disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.”

Photo by Tobi from Pexels

Now, I’m practicing. Solitude and silence to purposely hear God’s voice, to spend time with Him, to shut out the worldly chatter. A few routines: a walk in the mornings alone without earphones, getting up one hour earlier (I’m still trying this one), and 10-20 minutes of silence during the day. My goal is to remain silent for an entire Monday, once a month. However, at this point, I’m always talking myself out of it. I’ll let you know when it happens and what happens.

I pray God’s best for you.