The sound of silence

After an idea came to him one recent morning, a colleague asked, "Why do these things come to you in the morning?"

And the answer came to me today, but not in the morning. It didn't come while I was watching SportsCenter or twittering, not while I was e-mailing or reading and most certainly not while playing 'Princess' with a 4-year-old.

No, it came to me as the steady drone of the lawnmower drowned out all distractions. And there you have it. These things come to us in the morning, or mowing the grass, or in the shower or lying in bed because these are the times when we are silent. Even when the world is not silent around us, our minds are free to think, to wonder, to create.

As I plowed from one end of the yard to the other thinking about this, I was reminded of an experience in high school. A small group of 8 or 10 of us went on an Easter weekend retreat. For a portion of Good Friday afternoon, each person was sequestered in a room by themselves. No TV, no radio, no conversation. Just a Bible and a notepad.

I don't remember coming up with any radical theology during this time, but as the rain pelted down outside, it seemed I never better understood what it might have been like on a hill outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. In the silence, I found an emotional connection that's nearly impossible in a sound-saturated world.

It turns out the Bible was onto something: "Be still, and know that I am God."