It was 16th century mystic Saint John of the Cross who initially posited that, “God’s first language is silence.” Three centuries later, in Invitation to Love, American Trappist monk Thomas Keating commented on that insight. Keating wrote, “Silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to understand this language, we must learn to be silent and to rest in God.”
Most of us know the power of silence to some degree. But in a world filled with noise and distraction, finding silence is anything but easy. From the moment we awaken to when our heads hit the pillow at night, we are bombarded. From our TVs, to our car radios, to the hassles at work and in our in-boxes, to issues at home, to the crowds at Walmart, to our blasted and ever-present cell phones, we are constantly reminded of everything we have to do, everywhere we should go, everything we should be doing, and all of the things we have yet to attain. For many of us, silence sounds great - but we rarely experience it.
And yet, not only in the monastic tradition but in scripture itself, we find indication that the Divine Presence is often found in the silence. Perhaps the most classic case of that is the story of the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Elijah is seeking refuge from the noise of his own life, which was under literal threat by Queen Jezebel. At Mount Horeb, the ‘word of the Lord’ says to Elijah: “‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:11-12). Or you may be familiar the King James translation of that last verse, which says that after the fire passed, what remained was “a still small voice.”
Qol, the original Hebrew word being translated there, can mean "voice," but can also simply mean "sound." The other Hebrew words in that phrase also have multiple meanings: daq can mean "thin," "small" or "sheer"; and demamah can mean "whisper" or might just mean "silence." It’s hard to say whether the story is conveying that God’s voice is in the silence, or if the silence just prepares Elijah to hear from God - but either way, what is clear is that sitting in the silence is mandatory for Elijah to more fully experience the Divine.
Occasionally, the voice of God to me is insistent and relatively clear; but most of the time, it is quite subtle. And almost always, it emerges out of silence.
So perhaps tonight, as an act of prayer, we should just put down our phones, turn off the TV, and sit… with the Sound of Silence.