For some time I have wondered how Trappists get the dishes done. The problem is not with the washing and drying, but with the silence. I have been washing up after supper for over 30 years, first as a mandatory duty assigned by parents, and then as a minor contribution to the domestic management of my own establishment. On the whole, the task has proven congenial, but mostly for extrinsic reasons. The ordering pause at the end of the confusing working day is refreshing. Intruding hubbub is at a minimum, since others usually flee the scene once the job begins.
But most important, the brief stand in front of the sink has been a propitious occasion to catch up on the outside world via the radio. Years ago it was news from Lowell Thomas and Bob “On the Line” Considine, entertainment in a period of naïveté from Amos and Andy, and, if the atmospherics were right, Harry Caray doing the Cardinals from St. Louis on KMOX. In recent years it has been what passes for information about the world on Chicago’s “news” stations; Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms on WFMT; and with some regularity, Harry Caray doing the Cubs on WGN. So deeply ingrained have certain reflexes become that it now is almost impossible to turn on the faucet without first flicking on the radio.
My dish-washing rituals, as well as the invasion of my neighborhood by the Walkman and its clones, have turned my thoughts to what I perceive as the unimaginable self-discipline of the Trappists. My habits, and those of others, have raised all of a sudden the question of silence.
At first I was merely bemused as the joggers streaming by our house began to affect efficient little headsets with the tape players hidden somewhere in their underwear. Surely there could be nothing wrong with listening to Lorne Green read the King James Version or with reviewing the grammar of an unknown tongue as one padded along the miles.
A rude awakening in our college library soon made it clear that these machines could be put to other uses. Meandering from stack to stack one day last winter, I heard a faint parade of unseemly noises issuing from a carrel. There sat one of our brightest students staring diligently at some text, ears protected against the rustle of turning pages and gyrating brain waves with an exquisite set of tiny earphones. But it was not irregular verbs or the King James Version coming forth from the tape. And I could hear it from ten paces. The poor student, who did not seem conscious of the deadly assault upon his eardrums, looked up, smiled, and went back to his book and the Police, the Sex Pistols, the Moody Blues, or whoever it was that wailed on the machine. Subsequent close encounters on train and plane, in coffee lines and crowded hallways, led to the conclusion that many more headsets are purveying loud rock music than the recorded plays of William Shakespeare.
Soon it seemed as if all the students had grown these appendages. Everywhere the library was filled with adorned heads bobbing and weaving over their books. From all seemed to arise the faint cacophony. “Don’t they know the virtues of silence?” I muttered. “Don’t they realize how important it is to enjoy the quiet?”
It did not take long for the same questions to arise as I reached for my nightly radio fix. Don’t you know the virtues of silence? Don’t you realize how important it is to enjoy the quiet?
I suspect that this entire matter is far more serious than at first it seems. The miniature tape players are no doubt traffic hazards, and they certainly feed the hedonism that is the fate of America in the late twentieth century. But perhaps their greatest danger is to call into existence still one more competitor to the voice of God. Trappists, who no doubt jog and read books as well as do the dishes, have an advantage. They are not perplexed by the words of the psalmist, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Unlike many of us, they are in a position to understand intuitively what Joseph Addison wrote in his hymn about the creation:
What though in solemn silence all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball?
What though nor real voice nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
Forever singing, as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”
And perhaps they are better able to know not just God, but also themselves, by not being burdened with the incessant messaging of the ear.
The end of this story, of course, is that our family has just purchased its first Walkman—actually not a Walkman, but a less expensive mutation, the Magnavox Skyway Stereo Cassette Player D6621 with Ultralight Headphones. Ostensibly this purchase is for the children to employ on long car trips. But of course, the parents must try it out, too. And so we slip in a tape entitled “The Best of Beethoven.” All in spite of myself, I have to confess that it is marvelous. The tape is old, the background noise is high, and the selections flit without rhyme or reason from the Pastoral Symphony to the Moonlight Sonata and beyond; yet what wonderful, all-encompassing sound comes forth. Quickly the new machine is thrust into the closet. We do not want to expend the batteries before our trip begins.
Magnavox considerately enclosed a pamphlet with its Skyway Stereo Cassette Player, urging the purchaser, “For your comfort, health and safety … observe the following guidelines.” These include the reminder not to play the headset “at a high volume” since “hearing experts advise against continuous extended play.” Buyers are also cautioned: “If you experience a ringing in your ears, reduce volume or discontinue use.” And several lines warn against employing the headset while “operating a motorized vehicle.”
The people at Magnavox should be commended for the cautions they provide. I wonder, however, what mountains of corporate responsibility would have to be climbed to add a final word to the brochure. That would be a prayer by Sister Ruth, SLG (as found on p. 8 of the Oxford Book of Prayer), surely written expressly for our age:
O God, … let me climb through the
barriers of sound
and pass into your silence;
And then, in stillness and silence
let me adore You,
Who are Life—Light—Love—
Without being and without end …
God—God—God—Blessed be God.
Let me adore you.
Mark A. Noll is professor of history, Wheaton College, and author of Between Faith and Criticism: Evangelicals, Scholarship, and the Bible in America (Harper & Row, 1987).
