When I was a little girl, my dad used to say:

Marlene, Your tongue is loose on both ends.

I assumed that he meant I talked too much.  Over the years I have realized how right my daddy was and how precious silence can be.  There are times when more may be said with silence than with any other way.

I’ve always heard that silence is golden, but never experienced  to the extent I did when I went away on a weekend retreat.  We were in cabins in the middle of the woods on a quiet flowing river.

After the first night’s session were given the charge to “be silent” until breakfast the following morning.

That evening and following morning I reflected on a movie I saw as a young woman about a nun.  She was very young, beautiful and had made a lifetime vow to be single.  I thought,

Wow! She would never marry, never have a house of her own (with a white picket fence), nor become a mother.

I remember thinking,

She must LOVE God very much to give up all of these things for him.  Surely as beautiful as she was she could get the husband of her dreams and live “happily ever after.”

The really impossible to believe part of this story for me was the part where she gave up “talking” for a year.  I knew as talkative as I was, that this would be an impossibility, although I dreamed of having this type of faith and relationship with God.  Soon the movie was over and I forgot it, until that evening  and following morning at the retreat many years later. Listening to the quiet river, watching the squirrels and birds look and rustle about in the leaves for food, and hearing God’s voice speaking softly to me was an experience I will never ever forget.

We need to find God.  He cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence.  See how nature – trees, flowers, grass -grows in silence; see the stars, the sun, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence…  We need silence in order to move souls. ~Mother Theresa

As I listen and wait in silence for God to move my soul, I often try to take time to be silent.  It is in these quiet moments when I reflect on how good God is, and what a beautiful place He created for us to enjoy in silence!