Making Silence

Last week in one of our Level III (4th-6th grade) atrium, we spent some time playing "The Silence Game." Some of the kids in the room thought that this was like the game our parents made us play when we were kids and they were being driven crazy by all of the noise. "One-Two-Three- Little Red Schoolhouse!" The point of that game was NOT to be the first person to make noise otherwise you lose.

"No, no, no," I said, "This game is totally different than that game. This game isn't to make you be quiet so that I can have some peace. This game is that we all see how quiet we can be as a group and find out what happens."

To prepare for our 5-minute attempt at "making silence," I read them an excerpt of the book, The Power of Silence, by Cardinal Sarah.

"Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing. Modern civilization does not know how to be quiet. It holds forth in an undending monologue... Thus there is a dictatorship of speech, a dictatorship of verbal emphasis... From morning to evening, from evening to morning, silence no longer has any place at all; the noise tries to prevent God himself from speaking... The tragedy of our world is never better summed up than in the fury of senseless noise that stubbornly hates silence. This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter, wonder, and kneeling before God" (paragraph 74).

I asked if they are ever silent. The ones who said yes gave the example of sleeping and reading. So I asked if they were ever awake without words or images or sound drawing their attention. Do they ever just sit in the quiet?

We prepared ourselves to give the gift of silence to each other. Even if most of us were to try it, if everyone were not on board, it wouldn't work at all. So we took a deep breath, closed our eyes, and listened to the silence.

Mother Angelica wrote in her book Answers Not Promises of the time she was placed in a lonely hospital room at the end of a hallway with no one else there. The silence and quiet was frightening, really. However, she learned more in those few days about silence and prayer than all of her activity had taught her before (and she was a cloistered nun!) She said, "I became increasingly aware that His ever-present act of creation is a silent one, whether it is forming a child in a mother's womb or a blade of grass breaking through the earth." In other words, when you are finally alone with yourself in quiet, you realize that you are not alone.

After our five minutes of mostly silence, I asked the children what they noticed. One child thought it was boring, while another said she felt like she was floating. Another said he started to remember things of the past. Almost everyone said that it was a good experience and one they'd like to do again. "Can we do it for the whole class next time?"

An adult assistant raised her hand and said, "I realized that I need to do this every day." So often we don't do those little things that help us take care of our bodies (like eat right and exercise) or our souls (like daily prayer), but when we do, it makes us feel so much better! We read in the scriptures that we ought to "Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10. God promises that He will come to us in the silence. So set down your phone, turn off your radio, and give Him a chance!