Stillness

One Square Inch

A few years ago, Krista Tippett interviewed Gordon Hempton on an episode of On Being. Hempton had written a book called One Square Inch of Silence. He was introduced as an acoustic ecologist who records sounds of weather, quiet moments across all forms of wilderness, and animals, especially endangered ones. He made a bold claim that Silence is “an endangered species on the verge of extinction.” He talked about the physics of sound, generating sound waves and such, implying that from a technical perspective, silence means absence of all sound; a vacuum. When Hempton speaks of silence, he uses it synonymously with “quiet”, meaning the absence of noise. For our purposes, noise is pretty much anything human made that is out of context with the natural world. What captured my imagination was when he used the word “presence” in his conversation about silence. Presence in this sense is tied to experiencing quiet in a place.

Hempton talked about what I call the song of the trees. The breeze moving over grass has a certain tone or frequency range that you can hear. It’s a different sound than the tone of a pine tree. I have spoken of the song of the aspens. There is a slight whisper when a very slight breeze causes the aspen leaf to quake. This is exemplary of his concept of presence in silence. The sounds that are present are a function of the place and the moment. Spirit passing by in a breeze.

Presence to me also speaks of an awareness of other. Something, or someone, shows up in spacetime and you know it. You feel it. You speak with it. It speaks to you.

“And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹² and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.” 1 Kings 19:11 – 12

There is something deeply spiritual about the presence of silence

The still small voice.

I have heard it.

It was not on the radio, or TV, or podcast. It was not in a car on the highway. It was not in a book or on a clever blog.

Instagram and Tik Tok were not consulted. Nothing digital.

Always been in a quiet moment, far away from anything made by humans.

And usually without other humans around.

Aspen song. Bird song. Marmot chatter. Thunder. Water passing over rocks. Leaves falling like snow.

Anticipated but always unexpected.

The presence of silence. It is the still small voice.

I call it Stillness.

Stillness and Solitude

Stillness is the presence of the Creator in a quiet place in a quiet moment. You realize you are not alone. The communication is not in comprehensible words. You hear whispers that deliver thoughts to the conscious. Emotion follows, overflows. The presence of love. Connection to the universe.

Solitude is part of it.

It is so deeply connected that Stillness and Solitude may be one and the same. Both/and. Inseparable.

Richard Foster discusses Solitude as one of 12 disciplines, or spiritual practices in Celebration of Discipline. Solitude is a state of mind, to be differentiated from loneliness. He states that loneliness an “inner emptiness,” whereas solitude is “inner fulfillment.”

“Without silence, there is no solitude.” – Richard Foster

Silence is Solitude

Solitude is silence

Silence and presence is Stillness

Contact with the Creator