Silence

These past two weeks have brought about a flurry of new ideas and thoughts in my brain. The one that seems the most important right now, especially at this dawning of the school year, is the lesson on silence that I learned.

For 7 hours a day, 6 days for a week we listened to the wisdom of Augustine. For two hours a day, 6 days of that first week we would go off alone or sit without speaking with others and write, reread, and meditate on the previous reading.

Those quiet hours not only provided me time to help sort out and step back to look at the big picture of our reading, but it provided an appreciation of the silence and the calm. We had no where we needed to be. There was nothing we had to do. The computers were vacant, the cellphones were turned off. The cars were still. Our minds were going, but only to the gentle pace of our most learned author.

One memory keeps prodding through my thoughts as I think about silence. When everyone first came to Hill Abbey, that first afternoon there were silences in our conversation. I was comfortable, since I knew everyone, but I could tell there was an awkward tension in the air because everyone else did not know each other. We bumbled through the next few days, but after the fourth day we didn't have much gaps in our talk.

Two days ago, it began to rain in the afternoon, so we moved to the porch. After our trapest hour I found everyone back on the porch, quietly talking, wrapped in blankets and hoodies. We were discussing some of the things that struck us about Augustine's style, or themes throughout The City of God. The rain was slowly falling, and the air was cool. The world had a grey-blue tint to it as the grey clouds sat above us, and the pine trees seemed to take on a richer, deeper hue.
One of the girls was talking, slowly, gently, her voice soft like the air. She stopped, and the silence took place. I sat on the railing of the porch and felt so happy, so peaceful. My mind was thinking about Augustine, then about the wonderful weather and the day, then about that vibrant communion of saints we were experiencing right there. We were so comfortable, and so used to being quiet by ourselves that we slipped into that silence easily, the most natural thing to do when talking about Augustine on a porch out of the rain.

It was glorious. That silence was more full of life and meaning than the many conversations we have each day, stuffed with empty words.