The Silence Beneath

It was the last day of a conference, held at a Mennonite retreat site in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania.  With a four hour drive ahead of me in the early afternoon, I elected to take a short hike up into the woods behind the main meeting room.

Well, less a hike than a meditation, as there wasn't time for a true hike before the final plenary and worship.  I had eighteen minutes before that started, so I set a timer for seven minutes.  Seven minutes in, seven minutes out.

The morning was wet and cool, as an early rain passed through, leaving the hiking path damp but not soaked.  Blue skies were returning, and as I started up the hill, the air was lush with the scent of rainfall.  

I tended to my steps, not hurrying, rolling my feet to tread quietly and listen.  Here and there, as gentle breezes passed, was the sound of water pattering on leaves as it finally tumbled earthward.  Rustles in the leaves told of nearby chipmunks and squirrels.  I could hear the rush of a nearby stream, fattened and hurried by many recent rains.

And there was the roar.  A great, thundering, relentless roar.  A thousand feet away, an Interstate, bearing the endless rush of megatons of steel and rubber, cargo and passenger.  

The roar did not cease, did not yield, and barely wavered in tone and pitch.  It pressed in, permeated, declaring itself, so omnipresent that it almost became a given.  It was like, I thought, when my tinnitus is particularly declarative, when that single high-pitched tone steps in front of the stillness of my thoughts.

It can be distracting.  It is also important to acknowledge that it is there, not to forget its presence.  It tells us something, this tinnitus of commerce, this buzzing in the ears of our culture.  

But it felt, as I walked as quietly as I could, that I could hear the stillness of the morning woods beneath it, as if that layer of churn and bustle could be stripped away, and quiet could be returned.

For our sanity and our souls, it's important that it not overwhelm us, that we not lose the ability to hear the silence beneath it.