Issue 18: Sound & Silence

Single Issues > 2010 > Issue 18: Sound & Silence > Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note: Issue 18

With two young children running around the house and an office I work out of from home, I sometimes feel the near gut-wrenching and mind-angsting need to rest and be still, to have just one thought and complete it. Or ponder it. I’ve even yearned for the lavishness of taking a sabbatical or a vow of silence or fantasized about the seemingly luxurious focus of a monastic life. Ah, to be single-minded.

My brain is many-minded. And really, these aren’t viable options. I am trying to teach my 18-month-old how to talk. And every parenting article can’t stress enough the importance of conversing with your toddler, how she is learning new words every day, and how this is her verbal foundation. So I find myself talking all the time—pointing out each object in the room that catches her fancy and naming it, repeating to my daughter, “pillow. Pill-ow.” Yes, lest my daughter become tragically scarred in her verbal skills, now is not the time for silence.

Even so, I have still found myself craving it. Recently, upon arriving at Ad Lib’s artist retreat, I noticed that another group was also using the retreat facility, that they were having a silent retreat. For a moment I pondered tucking myself into their fold—opening the closed door and strolling in, quietly of course. I wondered about the silence there, wondered what it tasted like. But then I saw a dear friend waving me over to the correct conference room. We shared some words, a warm hello. My group started singing a few hymns, and the sounds of music and worship helped me remember that it isn’t simply loud sounds or my boisterous children that make my ears so tired, but rather, the noise, the sin, the clatter.

And then as we created Issue 18, I witnessed the distinction these contributors give us between sound and noise and also how silence helps us listen and hear. This issue was a gift to me, to ears made weary from a “noisy world” (as one reader calls it), and we hope it is a gift to you as well. So, it is with joy that we bring these offerings—an essay that helps us consider the effects of forcing silence on others, poetry on the sound of grief, aging, and love, fiction about silent fathers and the noise of laundromats, and art about the voice of cathedrals. Yes, like my daughter’s sweet “pill-ooow,” these are sounds worth listening for, but we must first be quiet in order to hear them (for me, a cozy reading chair and a warm fire help).

May we all have ears to hear,

Brianna Van Dyke

Editor-in-Chief