Between the Notes: The Gift of Silence and Stillness

Welcoming silence is actually an expansion of our awareness, not a diminishment. It’s another way of becoming more fully alive.

The Basilica Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi sits one block east of the main plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with the Sangre de Cristo mountains a soft, undulating backdrop at the edge of town. To enter the church, you walk up the outdoor steps past statues of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha and Saint Francis, as well as a beautiful stone replica of the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral. Even before stepping through the church’s bronze doors, these are obvious invitations: slow down, breathe, pay attention to the earth and its inhabitants, listen to your own heart. 

Every December I head north from Albuquerque to hear the stunning Desert Chorale perform its holiday concert at the cathedral. This year, as my friend and I sat in the packed church awaiting the start of the program, I was struck by the collective, voluntary quiet of everyone present. There was very little talking even though the concert wouldn’t begin for another fifteen minutes, and I found myself thinking: Oh, yes, we’re here for the music, but we’re also here for the silence and for the quieting of our hearts. 

Silence and its close ally stillness are paradoxical sources of life, beauty, and vibrancy. Br. David Steindl-Rast describes silence as something “not only as perceived by the ears, but also a quietness of the heart, a lucid stillness inside.” Amidst the demands of daily life, it’s easy to think that accessing this inner stillness can come only by way of a long retreat, vacation, or radical shift in our lives. And while retreats and holidays can certainly deliver a welcome reprieve, it’s only through daily practice that we can create and access the kind of silence Br. David is describing — a silence that is not so much a lack of sound as an inner quiet, not so much an absence of movement as a stillness in its midst.

If you’ve ever listened closely to the ocean’s tide, you know that there’s a brief and surprising quiet that lives just between the ebb and flow of each wave. It’s easy to miss because the waves breaking are both visually and audibly “louder,” but there it is, like the rest between notes, propelling life forward. There’s an invitation in that space, a mirroring of our very breath, to be still, to listen differently, to look around, to slow ourselves even while the waves, always, continue to crash.

As an orientation to life, grateful living invites us to expand our capacity to notice and appreciate what is available to us not only in the rich cacophony of life’s colors and sounds, but also in its silences and its stillness. Welcoming silence, it turns out, is actually an expansion of our awareness, not a diminishment. It’s another way of becoming more fully alive. The American theologian and civil rights activist Howard Thurman said it this way: “In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper in the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.”

To make our way with intention and agency, rather than simply being carried along on life’s currents, we should grab the life ring of silence and stillness — the daily opportunity to pause, look around, savor, and make meaning.

But it can be hard to hear this whisper. The volume of the world can be overwhelming, not only in sound but in activity, information, news, to-do lists, obligations, and necessities. There’s an old saying that one cannot live in the retreat house; most of us live in the noise, literal and figurative, of the world. To make our way with intention and agency, rather than simply being carried along on life’s currents, we should grab the life ring of silence and stillness — the daily opportunity to pause, look around, savor, and make meaning. The consistent cultivation of this kind of quiet is not a turning away from the world but a way of equipping ourselves to remain engaged. Like our every breath, inner silence and stillness are always there, waiting for us to notice and remember that being fully alive depends on them. 

At the end of the concert, the choir of twenty-five a cappella voices fans out around the edges of the sanctuary, encircling us for their last piece. We wait in quiet expectation, and when the singing begins so carefully and gently, one voice then two then many, I think about how almost everything in life is made more beautiful by the quiet in between — the rests between notes; the space between logs that allows the fire to burn bright; the field left fallow in order to return, fortified, and offer its harvest. I think about what we could save in the world if we each committed to creating some silence and stillness. I think about what we might save in ourselves. It is dark now in the sanctuary except for a few candles. It is utterly still. And as the choir sings us out into the clear, full-moon winter night, I carry the obvious gift of their beautiful music, along with the surprising and cherished one of silence. 

Note: A version of this essay was shared as the introduction to the Grateful Gatherings theme for December. Learn more about Grateful Gatherings here.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema

Sheryl Chard, Grateful Living

Sheryl Chard is the Director of Education at Grateful Living. She is a lifelong educator, passionate about designing innovative and beautiful spaces in which people are inspired to learn and grow. She has spent nearly three decades teaching and leading in schools and organizations, creating transformative learning experiences rooted in both scholarship and heart. In 2013, she founded the Sofia Center for Professional Development, whose professional offerings support and honor educators in their sacred work.

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