God Grant Us All A Silent Night. A Holy Night.

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.” --“Silent Night”, hymn, by Franz Gruber, 1818

There’s a silent night. Then there is a really, really silent night.

According to a recent article in The New York Times, the most silent and the quietest place on earth is found in “a leafy suburb of Minneapolis” at a place called Orfield Laboratories. Within a non-descript concrete building is a room called an anechoic chamber. As the article notes, “A person in [such a chamber] will hear nothing.” Nothing save for the sounds of one’s own body: heart beating, lungs breathing, stomach growling etc.

I’m someone who always, by years’ end, is so, so ready for a truly silent night on the 24^th of the twelfth month and beyond. I long for some peace and quiet. I’m tempted to hop on a plane and pay that lab a visit. (But not today. It’s -4 degrees in the Twin Cities and with gusty winds it feels like -31 below.  Silent night. COLD NIGHT!)

I can postpone that trip to the quietest place on earth until summer, but not my need for some December quiet. All of us as humans, we all need and desire some sssshhhhhhh time. For silence. For peace.  For rescue, from the cacophony of sounds in modern life, like annoying leaf blowers or seat belt dingers or cell phones brrringing and email notifications tinging. 

Yup—God, please help me make these all go away but also….

We need more silent nights and days from the perpetual buzz and the noise of our always on culture too. You know, from the manic media, from the loud and never-ending sounds of politicians pontificating, and man baby billionaires tweeting and Christmas commercials continuing and sports stars sounding off and blah, blah, blah, blah.  

It’s like none of us know how to just chill out anymore from this world’s chatter. I know I find it so hard not to immediately turn on the news when I get in the car or surf the web right when I get home or click through links on my phone when I have to find something to do for the three minutes I must endure while I wait in line at the grocery store.

Not that anyone else is like that, right?

It’s like so many of us are now addicted to noise. To the hype, and hyperness and hypersonic pace of our lives. It’s like we’ve forgotten how to turn it all off, turn it down, turn away from it, and then turn towards stillness. To just being. Listening. To the sounds of nature: snow falling, an eagle’s wings flapping, or the winds blowing through bare winter trees. Our devices are like crack and our world is always, ALWAYS ready to feed our habit, and our addiction to anything but silence.

Please give me instead, sweet silence. Just one silent night.

So quiet we can hear the beating heart of the one we love, sleeping right next to us. So quiet we can hear the prayerful longings of our hearts at years’ end, longings for peace on earth and goodwill to all people. An end to war. To pray—to listen to and to talk to God? It takes quiet. So quiet we can hear the cooing of an infant nestled in its mother’s lap, the gentle little snores of a child asleep on the couch, the crackle, and snaps of dry wood in the fire as it blazes away. So quiet we can actually step back from life and be alive to all that is good and to all that is right and to all that is true and to all that really matters in this life. 

Love, hope, joy, peace.

It takes some quiet for us to remember these things. The really important things. The things in life that last. That can’t be bought in a noisy store or ordered from Amazon.  The silence teaches us that life is a mystery and so precious but only if we are attentive to it can we appreciate that. The silence gives us the space we need to think, really think. The silence invites us into the wonder of life. What a miracle it finally and truly is—just to be alive.

God grant us all a silent night, and not just in the next few days but in the new year as well.  Silent nights. Holy nights. Quiet nights.  When all is calm, and when all is bright.

Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………..

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.