The Needful Silence

Today, an interesting programme from Australian Radio (Poetica). I’ve long understood the need for, and valued, silence in my life. Not everyone however is comfortable with it, and as I discovered recently, silence is easily misunderstood. Here’s a poetic look at the importance of silence. For a great book on silence I recommend Sara Maitland’s Silence.

“In the wired and connected twenty-first century, is there any place for silence? 

And with the word noise having its root in the Latin word nausea, does the lack of silence in our lives actually have a detrimental effect on our wellbeing?

Long ago the desert fathers retreated to the open spaces of the Middle East to contemplate their god. With the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution and now the technological one, our world is vastly nosier than theirs ever was. Social researcher and psychologist Hugh Mackay has written ‘Have we …become edgy about silence? Have we lost the art of pausing? Is our diet of fast data destroying our appetite for rumination and quiet reflection?’

In this sonic exploration of the meditative and therapeutic power of silence you’ll hear poets and thinkers as diverse as Søren Kierkegaard, Thomas Merton, Judith Wright, Miroslav Holub, Henry David Thoreau and ee cummings.”

You’ll find the podcast here.  

Comments

[Kate]

Thanks for this, Paul. Feels like it might be good option for Lent this year. That and the Maggie Ross one on Silence (referenced elsewhere on your site?). Cheers!