“Listen to silence. It has so much to say.” –Rumi
I was listening to the PBS program On Being with Krista
Tippett this morning and she was having a discussion with a man who has
apparently dedicated his life to recording the quiet sounds of nature away from
the noise of modern life. I’ve also observed
that there can be moments of “silence” on a moonlit winter’s night when the
winds are so silent that one can actually experience the gentle sound of a
snowfall. I’ve stood at the water’s edge
of a mirrored lake just off the Blue Ridge Parkway at sunrise and experienced
the silence of being still and knowing God.
The glorious silence was only interrupted by a bird’s song echoing
across the water as it was stirred awake by the sun’s warmth. I’ve recorded short video clips from my own backyard
deck of bird songs at daybreak that are very conducive to calming the chatter
of the ego mind.
The man noted that he has recorded the songs of many birds
out in nature and concluded that the sweet spot of human hearing coincides with
the range of their singing. He
believes that our hearing evolved over the millennia to be acutely aware of bird
songs because foraging humans found those areas to be compatible with
survival. He also noted that the winds,
especially those singing in the pines, have a higher range with shorter needles
and a lower range if they are longer. It
makes intuitive sense that our environment and subtleties such as this can have
a positive subliminal influence on our wellbeing.
Mindfulness teachers suggest that even if we cannot actually
be out in nature away from the busyness of life, we can discern and go to a
favorite “quiet place” in our mind. I
have at least two specific places in Colorado.
The first is at the base of a mountain lake in Maroon Bells National
Park outside Aspen. The other is sitting
on a boulder among the pine trees as the Bernoulli-effect breezes slice through
the pine needles in the canyons of Mesa Verde National Park.
Ralph Waldo Emerson encourages us to “be silent, that we may
hear the whispers of the gods.” Mozart understood
that “the music is not in the notes, but the silence between.” And the naturalist Henry David Thoreau observed
that “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we
go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.”
While extroverts often dislike being alone and introverts
tend to prefer it, people do need a support network and social connections,
while taking time for yourself outside in nature can be very healthful. That’s something to ponder in this unprecedented period of pandemic masking, lockdowns, quarantines, Zooming and Facetime!
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