Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room this week, a flat-screen TV filled the room with noise from screams, bells and applause as a woman picked her way through silver briefcases of cash on “Deal or No Deal.” I looked around the room and nobody was watching. Instead, they were filling out forms on clipboards, scrolling on their phones and staring out the window. One person was dozing.
A few days earlier on Saturday, we sat in the stands at Baylor’s McLane Stadium, watching the last football game of the year. Between plays and in every other non-football moment, two college bands played, a stadium DJ pounded our heads with music, and the PA announcer shouted to the crowd to “stand up and make some noise.” That seemed redundant with the bands and DJs all playing and making noise at the same time.
There’s noise everywhere. Dining out at a nice restaurant used to be a favorite way to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and other special events. But now it’s hard to find a restaurant where you can have a conversation with the ones you are there to celebrate with. The reminiscences of the years together are lost in the din of music, video screens and everyone else talking loudly trying to do the same thing.
If I was just entering college and considering a major and career, I’d give serious consideration to audiology. I figure there’s going to be a lot of money made treating ever-larger and ever-younger populations of people suffering from hearing loss.
We are a society addicted to noise. We can’t stand silence, can’t stand being still, can’t stand being alone. We want to be with people and yet we congregate in environments where we have to shout at each other to be heard and to hear.
But now we’re in Advent, the season leading to Christmas where we’re encouraged to be thoughtful, contemplative . . . and quiet. It’s a hard thing to do; it’s hard to be quiet when the calendar is filling with pageants and celebrations, whether they’re in the church or the mall. And as the days go by, everything seems to speed up and get louder as we rush to buy and cook and clean and prepare.
I don’t know what was happening in the time of the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, but he talks about how the people implore their idols to speak, but they can’t. “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!” (2:20)
I want to try to find more silence during this Advent season. I think being quiet in a quiet place might be the best way to prepare for the coming of the Lord to his holy temple.