The Small Voice and Sheer Silence

Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.

Gordon Hempton

I loved Gordon Hempton's book One Square Inch of Silence which is about his dedicated and wonderfully quixotic search for the places in America without human-made sounds. Hempton describes himself as an acoustical engineer but I regard him as an acoustical mystic. I do wonder if the name of the book should be One Square Inch of Natural Sounds because even when we find those places where human noise is absent there are the sounds of the natural world...but I quibble.

When we arrived at our friends' beach cottage in Nova Scotia we were aware of the difference in the soundscape literally from the moment we stepped out of our vehicle. We could hear the surf and the birds and the wind in the trees. We immediately felt more alive and complete because of these sounds. For the first five days we were there we blissfully enjoyed the absence of human sounds, a rare luxury we didn't take for granted.

                                                      "Skein" of Sea Foam on Port Joli Beach

During our first walk down the lengthy beach I thought of a verse from 1 Kings and the story of the fleeing, overwhelmed prophet Elijah. On a mountain he hears the "still small voice of God" (King James Version, or the "sound of sheer silence" as it's translated in the New Revised Standard Version. Many people prefer the former but I would suggest that the two always be considered together. It is often in the "sheer silence" of Creation that we are attuned to the voice of the Creator.

The photo at the top is of Ruth inscribing the outline of a labyrinth in the sand of the tidal flat in front of the cottage. We walked it several times as a spiritual exercise to the sound of waves and the wailing of seals. Within hours it was gone, covered by the in-coming water.

Comments about solitude, silence, and the absence of human sounds?

 

Last Light at the Keji Seaside Adjunct