{"id":2293,"date":"2004-09-26T15:22:53","date_gmt":"2004-09-26T20:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2004\/09\/26\/silence-in-the-darkness\/"},"modified":"2022-02-16T12:37:21","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T18:37:21","slug":"silence-in-the-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2004\/09\/26\/silence-in-the-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"Silence in the Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our pastor’s sermon this morning was on the somewhat unusual topic of silence. The focal verse was the first part of Psalm 46:10<\/a>, which directs us to “Be still and know that I am God…” and is one of a number of references throughout Scripture regarding the necessity of being silent (Ecclesiastes 3:7<\/a> probably being the most widely recognized of those verses).
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s almost impossible to find a place that’s completely silent. Even the seemingly quiet areas and times in our homes have a continuous soundtrack that we perhaps sense only subconsciously. In my home, it’s the whir of the computer fan, the chiming of the living room clock on the quarter hour, the A\/C compressor cycling on and off, the garbage truck in the alley, and so on. Even in the dead of night, the house clicks and creaks and that clock chimes it’s tightly wound little heart out.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us go out of our way to avoid silence anyway (a glance at the iPod sales statistics seems to confirm this). We’re uncomfortable with lapses in conversation; we’ll generate filler material, even when the interval between utterances would have been much more edifying. (It occurs to me that the same thing could be said for most of us bloggers with respect to the written word.)
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another rare experience nowadays is that of total darkness. Abe Lincoln could have done his homework by the cumulative glow of the LEDs<\/acronym> scattered around our house, what with alarm clocks, telephones, power strips, cell phones, various and sundry small appliances doing double duty as chronometers, etc. We even have actual night lights in each room of the house, although they seem redundant given the natural lumenosity of our surroundings.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Total darkness and total silence are, like straight lines, anathema to Nature. Light was the first thing God spoke into being, and the ability to stir the air — to make a sound — is one of the fundamental ways we judge something to be alive. Sensory deprivation<\/a> can be used to either heal or torture. As with most things in life, the key is moderation. I suspect we all could benefit from a moderate increase in silence. I don’t know if the same is true of darkness, but it’s not likely I’m going to find out anytime soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our pastor’s sermon this morning was on the somewhat unusual topic of silence. The focal verse was the first part of Psalm 46:10, which directs us to “Be still and know that I am God…” and is one of a number of references throughout Scripture regarding the necessity of being silent (Ecclesiastes 3:7 probably being… Continue reading Silence in the Darkness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kitchen-sink","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7445,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions\/7445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}