Small Changes for a Big Year: Choose Silence

Adapted from Shemaiah Gonzalez

(on Ignatianspirituality.com)

What if a new year wasn’t about more, but less?

We make our lists, our resolutions, our goals.

What if we stopped, simplified, slowed down?

What if we chose less noise?

This year, choose silence.

It is a small thing. A good thing. A healing thing.

Silence is clean, simple, tender.

It is a small choice you can make any time.

Silence is a gift to give yourself through the day.

Choose to drive without the endless banter of the radio. 

Choose to sit in a waiting room without a magazine. 

Choose to wait in a line without pulling out your phone. 

Choose to walk or run without music. 

Imagine looking for opportunities for silence throughout the day—as a treat, a way to nurture and reward yourself. Silence becomes a delight, a pleasure to enjoy.

In conversation, do not fill gaps with words -  in silence we can listen.

At work, pause to take five deep breaths in silence. 

How can we live without silence? Writer Brian Doyle said, “Sometimes you need to drink two or three glasses of silence before you can go on.” Once it is incorporated into our lives, we realize we were thirsty for it—longing for it.

How can we be ourselves without silence? We’ve been so busy becoming part of the noise. In silence we can hear our own voice and discover who we are.

Sometimes prayer is silence. It is not that we withdraw from the world and find God in a quiet place. It is that we, ourselves, become quiet. In our silence we hear that God is everywhere. Mother Teresa said, “In the silence of the heart God speaks.” 

When we invite silence into our lives, our heart becomes quiet, open. We can hear God’s still, small voice inviting us into his silent love.