“There is no such thing as a quiet trip to the store; almost every place that wants to sell us something plays background music—a curated playlist to set a specific mood. A lot of it is awful from an artistic standpoint, but whether or not we approve of the music, it’s everywhere. A few years ago Macy’s actually drove me out of the shop because the royalty-free pop music they played was so loud and so bad, I had to leave to protect my eardrums and my sanity. A new pair of jeans just wasn’t worth the audio torture. We are so accustomed to the ongoing soundtrack that its absence is noticeable. Once I went to the grocery store and realized I was rolling my cart around in silence. The sound system must have been having problems, and it was an odd feeling, like the eerie calm before a storm. I should have enjoyed the quiet, but I felt out of sorts, as if I might run into a zombie in the frozen foods aisle. We have been well trained to expect a constant hum of noise wherever we go.” (Lynette Horner)
“It is beyond dispute that we live in a very noisy world, a world characterized by constant drumming distraction. But, is this just harmless background annoyance, white noise? Or does it represent a real danger? Do select elements of all this “noise” coalesce into a an almost irresistible force that can cripple the spiritual senses, blind us to the light of God’s truth, and lead us to ruin? Are all these daily distractions really that powerful? Can’t we render them harmless by simply ignoring them? Perhaps, but what generally happens is that we actually grant these darkness-producing thoughts/words the power to destroy us. We give them legitimacy, weight and permission by deliberately engaging them in a running internal dialogue.” (Fr. Edward Rommen)
“When I have written on the character of modernity, I have frequently noted that it lures everyone into imagining themselves in the position of management. With this comes an arrogance that assumes a knowledge it does not have or a skill it never acquired. It speaks of power in a way that clearly reveals little awareness of its dangers. We become noisy people, whose opinions would destroy the earth were they ever to be naively implemented. The present use of power by those who wield it is clearly destructive in many cases, often met with yet more power in an effort to “fix” the last mistake. We have become a civilization built on its own collected errors whose “bills” are certain to come due sometime in the future.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“All of us want to live life to its fullest - God wants that for us as well. Sometimes we think living life to the full means cramming everything possible into it. So often we have so much going on in our lives and our world becomes one of chaos, noise and clutter - and we are none the happier for it. Is this what God intended for us? Does it have to be so complicated? The answer in a word, 'no.' We are the ones who make life complicated; relationship with God is intended to be simple – childlike simplicity.” (Deacon and Fellow Pilgrim)
‘We have all this noise and distraction because the world wants to hold us captive, and the path to our incarceration is through the senses…How do we find God?...God is not apprehended through sensory experience but in the stillness of the soul. Encountering God is by necessity quiet and peaceful. God comes to us when we prepare ourselves to receive Him by bringing our senses under control, by elimination the noise and clamor in the world, and by refusing the intoxication the world offers through our senses.” (Fr. George Morelli)
“For those of us in cities and suburbs, any effort to minimize the noise in our lives, to pursue silence and stillness, takes real effort. Modern society is stacked against us, clamoring for our attention in multiple ways, with lots of knobs, buttons, and links to fill the quiet…We have been well trained to expect a constant hum of noise wherever we go.” (Lynette Horner)
“Young people have ‘here and now’ as part of their psychological makeup. This is why politicians, communication specialists, advertisers and promoters of consumer culture depend on the immediate satisfaction of desires. So, the adolescent psychology spreads until it becomes common to all, with the result that we have no patience any more. We find ourselves in a world of impressions, dominated by those who make the most noise or are the most charismatic and promise to make everything easy. Our faith tells us that, if we wish to encounter Christ, apart from the ‘come and see’, there’s also the requirement of the narrow gate. So that love may be retained. So that Christ may be retained in our heart.” (Protopresbyter Themistoklis Mourtzanos)
“It is precisely this deeply ingrained habit of meeting thoughts with commentary sometimes frenzied and obsessive commentary that creates the noise in our heads, a good deal of suffering, as well as the sense of being separate from God and isolated from others. Sometimes these thoughts arrange themselves in such a way that they become a mental strategy. Among these mind games, and there are many, three are especially common: judging the quality of our own prayer, attempting to recreate positive experiences, and ego backlash.” (Martin Laird)
“…our continual saturation in noise keeps modern man alienated from his inner self…The nous is the eye of the soul, the faculty by which we know God, and thus the faculty by which we know ourselves. I have been told any number of times by readers and others that they have no idea what is meant by the nous. It is not surprising. Our culture lives by passion-driven consumerism, while “relationships” are often false constructs of shame and protection (self-created “identities”). Repeatedly, the Fathers of the Church urge us to embrace hesychia (stillness). The point of that stillness is, over time, the gradual increase in noetic awareness – growth in the knowledge of Christ rather than the mere religious training of our noise. Most importantly...the path in the knowledge of the self comes as we pursue the knowledge of Christ. It is not our invention. It is His revelation to us. It is knowledge of the self that God knows “before He formed you in the womb.” (Thomas Merton, Robin Phillips, Father Stephen Freeman)
“God reveals Himself when we are open to receiving Him. That’s why I’ve never experienced God in a traffic jam, or with the radio blaring, or at a crowded stadium. I experience God most powerfully in prayer, in worship, and sometimes even in conversation with one other person…I have experienced God in silence more than I ever have when there is lots of noise… “Provided they live a worthy life, both those who choose to dwell in the midst of noise and hubbub and those who dwell in monasteries, mountains and caves can achieve salvation.” (Fr. Stavros N. Akrotirianakis, St. Symeon the New Theologian)