These days, finding silence is both difficult and necessary.
It’s hard enough to find external silence. Even in the early morning hours, I hear the low hum of appliances, the whirring of fans, the on-again-off-again cycle of the HVAC unit, and the faint sounds of traffic and of trains in the distance. On workdays, this near-silence eventually gives way to the noisy news of Morning Joe and my loud inner commentator, to the clamor of email and text messages, and to the jangling of social media. Once everything is on, it’s almost impossible, at least for me, to switch it off, though off and quiet are what I crave.
Inner silence is even scarcer. When I read the daily lessons suggested by the Book of Common Prayer, as I regularly do, I hear the voices of the ancient witnesses but also the voices of my internal committee of selves. Simultaneously I hear
