The quality of silence

"There's an unceasing wind that blows through this night
and there's dust in my eyes, that blinds my sight
and silence that speaks so much louder than words" Pink Floyd - Sorrow

I knew it was a while since I last wrote; I hadn't realised it was two whole months. Silence, however, is not inappropriate because that is where I find myself. A few months ago I wrote "it is almost as if I have run out of words" and to an extent that is how I still feel.

Have you ever noticed there are different kinds of silence? When I walk, hand-in-hand, with my mother around the grounds of her care home, we are often silent because she has so little to say. This is a companionable silence. At the theatre an expectant hush descends in the time between the dimming of the house-lights and the opening of the curtain. Office banter gives way to preoccupied silence as people work. Sometimes I find myself pausing in conversation as a new, unrelated thought hits me - a distracted silence. And then there is the stony silence after an argument. I remember once driving around Scotland with two friends. We had disagreed on the goal for a day. Two of us wanted to get to the coast - the third wanted to climb a mountain. The silence from the back seat of the car became almost like a physical presence. I could feel it's negativity reaching out and suppressing the joy of the holiday.

This last couple of months I felt most of these types. It started by getting distracted with some new project. This drove me into preoccupation and - dare I say - a month where I pretty much ignored God. Awaking from that I realised just how much I had drifted. Moving back toward companionable silence has been hard work. I'm still not entirely sure I have made it. Sometimes even companionable silence stretches out and becomes stony. It is hard to break that kind of silence, when you don't know what to say.