What is silence? And how is silence related to listening? While not exactly the same thing, silence and listening do overlap each other. Maybe one definition of silence could be eliminating the noises or sounds that we make so that we can take note of, or listen to, noises or sounds that we are not making. Sometimes those noises come from outside of ourselves— such as winds howling, dogs barking, or friends talking. But we can also listen to those ephemeral visitors in our consciousness that come, unbidden—the nearly constant flow of feelings, thoughts, memories that arise, stay awhile, and dissipate, all on their own.
So why all this focus on silence? Well, in Kids’ Connection on Sunday mornings, I am planning to include more opportunities for the children to learn about, experience, even play with the concept of silence. We have already incorporated a kid-friendly meditation experience that introduces the concept of silence. We all sit, with one hand raised in the air. Then, we play an extended sound—a chime—that lasts for about ten seconds before fading away. We keep our hands in the air until we cannot hear the sound anymore. Interestingly, the hands come down one at a time. Finally, we attempt to extend that moment of silence after the chime ends. The operative word there is “attempt.” I like this meditative sequence because it starts out with silence brought on by listening to sounds from our physical environment (the chime) and ends with an opportunity to shift our listening to noises from our psychological environment (our thoughts, feelings, memories).
A few weeks ago, after completing this meditative exercise, I read the children a book entitled The Silence Slips In by Alison Hughes and Ninon Pelletier. In this book, silence is somewhat anthropomorphized. It has a face and ears—although it looks more like a giant bunny than a human being. This larger, cloud-like being with a face and ears drifts into various situations that call for silence (e.g., bed time, moments of frustration, time for cuddling with a dog). When the silence slips in, the imposing, green being with a face, known as Noise, steps out of the picture to make room for Silence. This is a lovely book that makes a clear statement about how silence and noise move back and forth, taking turns, throughout our days, throughout our lives.
My hope is to build gradually the children’s understandings about what silence is and how it can be valuable for individuals and groups of people to know when and how to let silence slip in.