Our desperate need for quiet places.

It was the Spring of 2024, and I was standing on a snow covered mountain ridge surrounded by the French Alps. The sky was an intense blue, contrasting beautifully with the ice white snow and the deep green hues of the forests far below, but what I remember most was the silence. 

I’ve never been anywhere so quiet, no distant rumbling of traffic or evidence of other people nearby, I can’t even recall hearing birds or wildlife. It was just perfect, untouched silence while my husband and I stood in awe at the beauty of these mountains that had proudly stood for centuries. I don’t think I can recall hearing my own thoughts at that moment. 

Fast forward a couple of years, and my days now always start with my son crying to be held, the sound of car doors slamming outside the house, birds chirping and the neighbourhood coming to life, but louder than all of that, my noisy thoughts and worries come crashing in the moment my eyes open. 

It reminds me of this quote by C.S Lewis:

It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

Finding ways for that ‘quieter life to come flowing in’ these days can feel impossible. Not only are we now used to a frantic pace of life, dramatic news headlines and the noise of the crowds we carry around in our pockets through social media, we’re living in a perilously anxious and over-stimulated age. Our lives are noisy, distracted and too easily interrupted by notifications and apps specifically designed to hold our attention for profit.  

I know this isn’t new, I’m not pretending to come up with anything profound in writing this, but I am starting to sense the whisperings of rebellion. 

Have you noticed it too? A slow but steady rise in those deciding to choose another way to live after realising that we’re just not designed to thrive this way. We need rhythms of silence, peace and solitude to function as human beings. It's what makes us different from machines. But how do we find this new (or ancient) way of living? How do we rebel against the relentless noise that has infected our entire existence? 

We hear in the gospels how Jesus allowed interruptions, who was often torn in multiple directions, who found himself surrounded by hostile crowds but also loved to with those He loved. If we look at how He spent His days, we know that noise and activity in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, we’re not called into some distant place in the middle of nowhere where we grow our own vegetables and isolate ourselves completely (no matter how tempting it may seem). But we do also also know that He ‘often withdrew to lonely places to pray’, and invited His followers to do the same. 

Mark 6:31 "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." 

Why is it that He needed these moments of quiet? Why is it that we all need to find these places of rest? 

Looking through scripture, I can see that God reveals Himself most clearly and most intimately to His people in moments of quiet and solitude, whether that’s Elijah on the mountaintop after a period of depression and despair, Peter eating breakfast with Jesus on the shores of Galilee after publicly rejecting Him, or David in the fields watching over his flock before being elevated to King. 

Perhaps it’s because it’s here, in the quiet places, that we actually hear and experience the love and grace we so desperately need, especially when we’re going through times of turbulence. God chooses quiet moments to speak comfort and truth to us, and Jesus demonstrates that rhythms of prayer and silence are absolutely necessary in order to live a holy and impactful life. We don’t need to escape from our lives permanently to live in a balanced way, we do, however, need to find daily ‘places’ of quiet amidst the noise to experience the grace and strength to keep going.  

Now there are moments in my life where I dream of going back to those French Alps, as if physically removing myself from my location is the only route to find peace and quiet. I think this is why we as a culture are obsessed with holidays and mini-breaks, we can’t see a way to access quiet or rest in our normal lives so we wait for a life ‘pause’ to recuperate. But what happens for those who can’t leave their normal lives? Who perhaps lives in the centre of a noisy city, or whose anxious thoughts they carry around with everywhere they go? Are we doomed to a life lacking in peace and quiet? 

Of course not. 

When David says in Psalm 121: I lift my eyes to the mountains, where does my help come from? The invitation isn’t to physically take ourselves to mountains, it’s to lift our eyes above our current circumstances. I find it so interesting that the biggest threat to living a quiet life is on a device that forces our eyes downwards and inwards, a pocket sized piece of technology that’s existed for mere years holds within it’s four edges the crowds, noise and hostility of the entire world, and yet we’re invited to take our eyes upwards and outwards to something so much bigger than ourselves, that has existed forever in comparison, that allows us to finally experience the quiet we need to hear the gentle whisper of God. 

This is what this next collection of artwork is trying to achieve, it’s inviting you and me to those quiet places for a while. To take 10 minutes at the start of your day to sit in silence, to turn off the screen, to turn off the podcast on your walk, to reject the distractions, to delete the app for a while, to be OK with not replying straight away, to send our attention and our focus upwards, even if it’s just for a moment or two. 

It starts with 'Gentle Whisper'.