Unity Center
 2041 Old Fanning Bridge Road, Mills River NC  28759
(828) 891-8700, 684-3798
Email: unity(at)unitync.net

Sweet Silence

Working in a community college library that also encompasses an Early College program on campus (9-12th grade high school students), I experience cell phone usage at a distance, but on a daily basis. Our rules are basic: If it rings, take it outside to talk. Texting is fine, as long as you aren’t giggling with your friends over the response or taking a make-up test in our jurisdiction.

Outside the confines of the library, where the phones are immediately put to use, the conversations which were so very important to the user are inevitably bland, boring and ridiculous minutiae of non-important chatter. If I am in that area, I shake my head as I overhear blathering silliness (not that I chose to listen, but I am bombarded with the loud chats of louts). In some cases, I am exposed to the sexual escapades of the students who seem totally unaware of how far their voice carries.

More than once on the highway, idiot drivers, blithely holding a phone in one hand and gesticulating while driving with the other, have tried to run me down or rear-end me. I can’t imagine the stupidity of those who text while they drive—what the word moron was created to represent, I believe.

I resisted all attempts by my daughter to convince me that a cell phone would be a worthwhile investment, even when we almost missed each other in an airport. For my 60th birthday in April, my girlfriend bought me a $25 throw-away at the Dollar Store. The only time it is on is in the airport, or if I must make a long distance call when I am not at home. It rides in my purse, in the off position, and I only think to check for messages or recharging once a month or so. Needless to say, messages are rare.

One of my favorite books was Stephen King’s Cell, where everyone was blasted to savage, murderous insanity by their cell phones. As far as I am concerned, it has already happened. I do worry about reports of radio waves from phones causing cancer of the brain—my daughter, as I said, uses one.

With great joy, I read the editorial in November 2, 2009 Newsweek magazine by Julia Baird entitled, The Devil Loves Cell Phones: Silence Isn’t Just Golden—it’s Heavenly. She quotes Sara Maitland in the newly published A Book of Silence as saying that the mobile phone “is a major breakthrough for the powers of hell.”

By our filling every moment with televisions, phones, iPhones and their billion attachments, Facebook and Twitter, we are busily overloading our brains with regurgitated nonsense instead of allowing them any time to think and grow. (Another bugaboo I hate with a passion is the take-over of public places by obnoxious, omnipresent television sets, usually tuned to Fox news or some other downer. If I am in a waiting room by myself, I immediately shut it off. Why should I be paying a doctor or dentist to impose that garbage upon me? And forget about going to restaurants with TV’s—count me out!)

By filling every moment with things to say and do, we do not allow ourselves those priceless moments of awe and awareness of the beauty that is life.

Maitland as a young girl heard voices on the wind and felt connected to the cosmos—life was bliss. She had the same fey feeling for life that I have written about in past Unity articles about when I was young. It is an ongoing experience as an adult when I am in the company of nature. Thoreau got it right.

According to Baird, Maitland states that we only experience small quantities of bliss in the few moments we experience peacefulness: a hot bath, a run, or a bike ride. Those who live a more ascetic life of silence—nuns, sailors, hermits, and divers—know the magic that resides in stillness. When we rush to fill every void, every minute of peace, we no longer have the opportunity to experience the God moments.

Baird quotes C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters as saying Hell “ is the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless and virile…We will make the whole universe a noise…The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end.”

I recently walked in the woods on a beautiful fall weekend, marveling at the way the sunlight energized the leaves, making them glow from within. With the crystal blue sky as a backdrop, I was aware of how lucky I am to live in such an amazing place. I have no neighbors. I live in solitude with my husband at the end-of –the-road, adjacent to the national forest. Raucous mallards call evening greetings as they arrive at the pond for our corn offering. The wind chimes on the porch create nightly lullabies, and birds sing the rising sun into being. The occasional dog barks down the road, or train whistles in the distance.

It is heaven on earth. It is the place where I go to connect with God. I give thanks for the beauty in my life.

Postscript:  

My belief that cell phones really are driving people crazy seems to be supported by the comic strip Jumpstart, by Robb Armstrong. After I wrote the above article, he began running commentary on the wives running up high cell phone bills and hiding them from their husbands. A laugh a minute.

After I noticed that “comic,” I was standing in line at the credit union and a woman, very well-dressed, was carrying on a loud conversation with the teller about an overdraft. The teller asked what she wanted her deposit to cover. Her mortgage was $600 and her cell phone bill was $800 and the deposit could not cover both. The woman said, “The phone.”

The teller ran her fingers through her hair, obviously distraught, and said, “The phone? Not your mortgage?”

And the customer said, “I'll think of something.” She sighed, “I’ll think of something.”

The teller seemed as aghast as I that this woman’s addiction to that bit of plastic was more important to her than her home!

I also have friends with iPhones who cannot carry on a conversation without constantly playing with their phones, checking Google for information about whatever the conversation is about while half listening to what you are saying. It akin to an invitation to someone’s home and they leave the television on full blast while you are trying to visit. Or is it just me?