Silence.

It has been one of the most profound markers of this global pandemic. Not simply the lack of surface noise, but the presence of a deep quiet. It is, as many have noted, as if the Earth is catching her breath. Not gasping for air, but quietly inhaling and exhaling in the way one does when in a deep and restful sleep.

It is as if silence is the container in which creation is meant to reside, and it must have been here all along, as in forever. But it took the absence of manmade sound for it to quietly slip into my awareness. In just 6 short weeks I have come to depend upon the presence of this ancient silence. It has permeated my interior landscape and quieted my inner thoughts, and I never want to lose it again.

This morning, for the first time in many weeks, that deep silence was broken. Shortly after sunrise the sounds of big equipment rang across the valley. Someone, somewhere nearby, was dropping trees and moving dirt, the sound of human voices raised above the mechanical din, and try as I might, I could no longer locate the silence. It has been punctured by the sounds of people engaged in work that must have felt important to them, and yet in that moment I was filled with the kind of sadness that accompanies the loss of someone or something precious.

It was grief, pure and simple. The silence was gone.

It was tempting to place blame on those doing the work, or find fault with the people pushing to lift the restrictions meant to safeguard us too quickly. Doing so would have felt far better than sitting with the sadness. However, as the equipment continued to do what it was doing, I tried to let that sadness do what it was doing. As painful as it is, our sadness always points us toward something we hold dear.

Even as I understand that we must carefully begin to emerge from this time of quarantine and sheltering-in-place, I am deeply afraid of losing what has been gained during this time of mutual sacrifice for the common good. Of forgetting what has been remembered, and of discarding what has been discovered. Silence is one such thing.

Whatever work was being done just beyond the trees surrounding our property came to an end. The sound of heavy equipment and the people operating it stopped, and there it was. The deep silence, that container within which we all reside, was still there. And it always will be. If I lose touch with it again, there is no one to blame but me.