In The world of Silence, Max Picard writes, “There does not seem to be any space left where there could possibly have been anything but noise. We take it for granted much as we take the air itself for granted. Everything begins and ends with noise.”
Is it fair to say we prefer it this way? It seems that the sound of silence is unnerving. We are inundated with stimuli. Televisions are on; Bluetooth’s are connected; headphones are in. We live and move and have our being in the next ding, alert or hum of a vibrating phone that has been turned to “silent.”
Noise is associated with overconsumption and overstimulation. Restaurants purposefully increase the volume of their music because studies have demonstrated that louder music causes people to eat more salty food. Other studies have shown that restaurant goers drink upwards of 30% more alcohol when the music is turned up. As Anthony Esolen writes, “In the beginning there was noise, and the noise was with ennui, and ennui was the noise.” Sound obliterates thought. Noise pushes out meditation and eradicates contemplation.
Post presidential election, Georgia runoffs and a second impeachment hearing, it is nearly impossible to find a channel that has not become political noise. Dr. Esolen again,
“Lest the customers at the counter not be able to hear the political noise for the noise of the cooks and clerks, the screen spells out the words in a caption, one or two letters after another, like smoke across the sky. It is a shriek for the deaf or the deafened. The mouth of the candidate is moving, but nobody listens to him as he speaks, for listening is only possible when there is silence in man: listening and silence belong together.”
This is precisely where the Hebrew alphabet begins. Aleph is a silent letter. In a way it is similar to the English letter “a”, but at the level of sound it is quite different. You can perhaps think of the different ways we pronounce our letter “a.” Some linguists assert that depending on the speaker’s accent, at the level of sound, there are nine ways to pronounce the letter “a” in English.
However, in Hebrew, at the level of sound, the letter aleph sounds like silence. It is a listening letter. Although that is not technically accurate; it is actually the glottal stop that you make when you open your mouth as you are about to speak, but say nothing. That is the “sound” of aleph. It is the sound of silence.
“Listening and silence belong together.” Oddly enough we live in a world that has grown silent and it has been disquieting. Restaurants, arenas, concert halls, schools and sadly, churches, have groan silent. Churches have banned singing and in some cases music altogether. Venues that were once the home of sounds: the explosion of a crowd; the thrill of spontaneous applause lay oddly quiet. Perhaps we need the reminder of the profundity of silence. Perhaps the silence is gesturing towards our need to listen.
We often cave to the pressures of noise and sound. We can be tempted to believe that value is determined by utility or productivity. We measure who we are by what we are able to accomplish with our sounds. The racket we can make regularly determines our sense of worth. Significance and identity are tied up in doing and achieving, rather than being. One of the Christian weapons of resistance to such forces is silence.
Silence is a blessing precisely because we cannot use it. No one is selling or marketing silence. No one is playing silence on the radio, or on the television. Silence cannot be used and God should not be thought of as usable, marketable, buyable, sellable. Silence is receptivity; it is listening. Silence is a willing act of stillness, of being.
As such, silence is a habit and a practice of love. Silence is an indispensable part of our relationship to both God and man. It is possible that not only can God not be heard without our silence, but we cannot be loved by him, without his silence.
Zephaniah 3:17 reads:
The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
However, as Lauren Winner points out, there is a viable translation of the phrase “he will quiet you by his love” that invites an interesting take on silence and our relationship with the divine. Her proposed translation reads:
“He will shout over you with singing
He will jump for Joy in jubilation
He will be silent in his love.”
As Dr. Winner points out, God can and often does love us with his silence. Perhaps there is no relationship with God without his silence. Perhaps it is only after the silence of God, the silence of death, the stillness of the tomb, that there is space for the explosion of exultant singing.
Silence is indicative of our dependence. Silence is intrinsic to what it means to be a human. Silence is the space where we meet the supernatural. Silence is a mechanism by which we can visit another world, the real world. Ask Elijah. To invite and create silence is to sit before God. It is to recognize his existence and his victory. It is preparation not only for his coming, but for the newness he will Father forth.
Theologians have long divided the ten words of Sinai into the categories of love of God and love of man. It is fitting then that the first letter, of the first word, of the first commandment begins with a silent letter. However, the letter aleph has also been described by Hebrew scholars as a face. The upper right hand corner and bottom left are the eyes. The long diagonal slanted line is the nose. Aleph is a human face. Aleph is a silent letter. Aleph is a silent face.
Marina Ibramovich was a post-modern performance artist. One of her “pieces” involved an invitation to come and sit with her in a designated space and simply gaze into her eyes. Marina booked a venue and advertised that anyone was welcome to, one at a time, sit across from her and look at her face while she looked at theirs. The invitation to look at one another was for as long as her guest desired. The average person was there for five minutes. Some stayed for hours, a few were there all day. After this experience she wrote, “If you look at any human face long enough you will begin to weep.”
The photo entitled “The Final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, 1943” is one of the most haunting images of the Holocaust. In the picture we can observe German soldiers in the background who have been rounding up Jewish men, women and children for deportation to Auschwitz. The victim’s faces look every which way, but no one seems to be looking at anyone else. The majority of those pictured have their hands in the air. And yet separated from the rest, by a negligible space, is a young boy who appears to be 7 or 8 years old. He is neatly dressed in shorts, an overcoat and cap, and like the others his hands are in the air. But he seems to be with no one; separated even from his fellow deportees. And his otherwise innocent and beautiful face wears an expression of fear and confusion. To look at his face, is to look at silence.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to look at that young face for very long and not be overcome with anguish. His face carries – the history of humanity; the history of human faces.
If you look carefully for long enough at any human face; you can see your history. You can see innocence, confusion, fear, suffering, and betrayal. In each human face, we can find the history of humanity: Auschwitz, the gulags, the betrayal of Caesar, the denial of Christ.
Perhaps this is why we don’t look at faces- at least not for very long. It is indeed somewhat shameful or embarrassing to stare into someone’s eyes – it feels impossible. Eye contact, on average, lasts between 2-3 seconds before we avert our gaze. To stare into a human face; to stare into someone’s eyes feels intensely, immensely intimate. As though we are gazing at someone’s naked soul.
However, where there is relationship; say between lovers there we find the practice of silence. For a bride and her bridegroom silence is not unnerving but rather one of the habits of love.
When two people fall in love, and perhaps more profoundly when two people stay in love, there is a contentment a wondering- a silent marveling at the mere existence of that person.
People who fall in love will often be found staring into each other’s eyes for prolonged periods of time. Falling in love is filled with silences, long silences of watching, staring, even listening to the sound of silence on the other end of a phone.
Sinai is the commitment of the bridegroom to his bride. Sinai begins with a silent letter, a still face. Sinai concludes with a wedding reception and the explosion of praise in the newly built tabernacle. As Picard writes, “Where silence is still an active force, man is constantly re-created by the word that comes out of the silence, and constantly disappearing in the silence before God.”
Silence and praise are the moves, indeed the disciplines of love. Falling in love is an intricate dance of silence and praise. A husband who is willing to submit himself in silence to his wife; to listen and receive, in humility, to her concerns, her guilt, her fears, and her frustrations will be all the more prepared and equipped to sing her praises. Only when the groom submits in silence can he lead with praise.
The men and women who frequently listen to and then praise their spouse, will find an unending explosion of spontaneous love. True love is filled with silences, long silences; and then detonations of praise.
Perhaps the church’s praise is stale because we do not give silence the time to rise.
Perhaps our marriages are kitsch rather than works of sculpted beauty because husbands don’t stare and listen. Perhaps our Easters are far less explosive than our Christmases because our Lents are too loud.
This Lenten season, listen for the sound of silence.
Rev. Jacob D. Skogen is a graduate of Duke Divinity School (ThM 2016), and ordained through a local church in Southern Pines, NC. He teaches Upper School Theology and Ancient Literature at Regents School of Oxford where he also serves as the Principal of the Grammar School. He is married to the former Sarah Moore and together they have four children and live in Oxford, MS. He is the author, most recently of “That Your Generations May Know: Epistemology and Covenant Succession” published in Faithful Ministry by Wipf and Stock.