background on Quiet

In the Critically acclaimed 2018 horror film A Quiet Place , Earth faces an alien invasion unlike any other. In the movie, the aliens behave like merciless monsters, using their lightning-fast sp...

The fascination with silence took root early in the life of composer John Cage. In 1928, during a speech contest at Los Angeles High School, he argued for the establishment of a national day of quiet....

In downtown Helsinki, there is a small building called the Kamppi Chapel. It’s not a place of worship, strictly speaking, but it’s as quiet as any cathedral. Quieter, in fact, because there are no ech...

Holy silence is spacious and inviting. You can drink it down…During congregational silences, in meditation rooms or halls, in prison cells and meeting rooms, in silent confession at church, all these ...

In Lancelot , one of Walker Percy’s final novels, the narrator reflects on his own struggle with idleness and addiction to entertainment. In a poignant scene set outside his Mississippi mansion, ...

A common question I’m hearing from folks these days is whether it is beneficial (or a moral imperative) to pay attention to the news. The Catholic nun and social activist Dorothy Day asked the same qu...

As a third-century man was anticipating death, he penned these last words to a friend: “It’s a bad world, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who ...

In this short excerpt, scholar Ken Bailey provides context to the 23rd Psalm: “He leads me besides quiet waters”: M.P. Krikorian grew up in a village near Tarsus in southeast Turkey. Born into a fam...

Experienced mountaineers have a quiet, regular, short step—on the level it looks petty; but then this step they keep up, on and on as they ascend, whilst the inexperienced townsman hurries along, and ...

Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria, one of the principal cities of the ancient world, once traveled to the monastic colony at Skete in the Egyptian desert. The younger monks were distressed that thei...

Think back over your life and try to remember a place where you felt safe and at peace, a time when you felt relaxed and okay. It could be an outdoor place—like on a beach or sitting in a tree. Maybe ...

Scientifically speaking, it is quieter after a fresh snowfall. A snowflake’s six-sided crystalline structure creates small spaces… that absorb sound waves. Because of this unique shape, snow dampens n...

Your body knows about schedules. It gets used to those times of day when it says, Feed me right now. I’m hungry, and those times of night when it says, Get me to bed. I’m exhausted. Your body will spe...

In his important book, The Crucifixion of Ministry, seminary professor Andrew Purves describes what he needed as he faced down a cancer diagnosis and the upcoming chemotherapy he would soon endure: ...

The problem we face today needs very little time for its statement. Our lives in a modern city grow too complex and overcrowded. Even the necessary obligations which we feel we must meet grow overnigh...

While there is a common assumption in church circles that God speaks most frequently and the clearest through singing worship and heart-enlivened sermons, I find the context of speechless tranquility ...

In her excellent book Liturgy of the Ordinary, pastor and author Tish Harrison Warren describes an encoutner her husband experienced while working on his PhD. While my husband, Jonathan, was getting...

A woman and her six-year-old daughter were found dead in their neat, orange brick suburban home. The husband and father had murdered them and attempted to take his own life. He was found unconscious a...

Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Wer...

In the wilderness, life is stripped of distractions. It is quiet. The topography demands discipline, simplicity, and fierce attention. Solitude in the wilderness makes irrelevant all the people-pleasi...

For many of us, silence is something we try to avoid, both in conversations and in preaching. But as Richard John Neuhaus aptly describes in his time watching Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his sermo...

In his excellent book, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World , Mike Cosper explains the value in persevering through the difficult realities of practicing solitude. ...

In the midst of a busy schedule of activities—healing suffering people, casting out devils, responding to impatient disciples, traveling from town to town, and preaching from synagogue to synagogue—we...

One evening I was taking a stretch break from study, walking out into the night. Soon I began speaking prayers of complaint . . . a little like the lament psalms in the Bible. I wasn’t angry, really, ...

It was William Shakespeare, in 1597, who had Henry IV complaining about the duties of kingship. “How many thousands of my poorest subjects,” the king lamented, “are at this hour asleep!” He goes on to...

My first conscious experience of hearing the voice of Jesus occurred when I was a college student. It grew out of a period of genuine frustration. Because of my poor academic training and a less-than-...

A few weeks after Rich Mullins died in a car accident in 1997 at age forty-one, his friend and financial manager, Jim Dunning, went to collect Rich’s possessions. Mullins was a wildly successful Chris...

Rodney King had led the police on a high speed chase through Los Angeles. Eventually the police got him to stop, and after he exited the car, he was savagely beaten by four officers. The entire countr...

Gandalf: I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.  Bilbo: I should think so—in these parts! We are plain, quiet folk and have n...

My wife is a big fan of an advice column called “Ask a Manager.” The articles offer a variety of subjects, many of which are serious, but some are downright hilarious. They often capture the absurditi...