Silence is golden By Father Jeff Jarvis College Chaplain
Heaven, absolute heaven! The last day of Term 3 came as a welcomed break. Time to rest and re-energise. So it was that Helen and I set out to leafy Mapleton as our base to utilise the walks and silence of Queensland’s Kondalilla National Park. As a young Police Officer, I found the solitude of “walking the beat” on night duty a time of enrichment and nourishment. The enforced silence of those days was real. House and pub lights would generally be extinguished by 11pm. Television stations would close until the next day. There were few night clubs. Communication was through landline phones and letters. All was still. Peace until the re-ignition of activities at 6am. Seven hours of “rhythmic, thoughtful, silence”. We all need “time out” to refuel. Today’s world is one in which silence is seen as a negative. There is a pressure to always be available through social media. Our children feel that an essential part of them is missing if they are not permitted to have this constant communication available. Silence equals time wasted. A time when we might be left out of the “loop of social gossip.” To start at the crack of dawn a three hour walk into isolated forest enables one to experience the beauty of unavailability and a silence only broken by the sound of rustling leaves, singing birds, and sometimes chattering water. My silence was interrupted by a sudden movement in the growth and the appearance of the long nose of a fox. We both paused, as we eyed each other for what seemed an eternity but could only have been a second before the mystery and joy of the moment was shattered by a loud voice calling out, “Workout paused.” Each morning at home I would normally have my Apple ear pods in enabling me to hear the sounds around me whilst being informed of my time and pace at each kilometre interval. However, this time, I’d left them at home. The voice rudely permeated the parks silence shattering the healing nature of silence again. By the time I looked back up, the fox was gone, as was the moment. Jesus would often go off to a deserted place to pray. Silence is critical, it helps us to heal; to communicate with our own inner voice. Silence allows us to unclutter and put things into perspective.
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