Hello my dear friend and welcome back to the Sunday Series!
Today we have a short post to round out our weekend and get ready for the upcoming busyness. I only have a few words to share today, but I think that goes along with today's topic which is that sometimes, it's good to be quiet.
I have been pondering the concept of "quiet" a lot lately. I've been feeling a stirring in my soul to move towards gentle quietness. I want to spend less time online and more time breathing in the rhythm of routine, nature, and slow living.
Now, I do think I am already greatly blessed with the opportunity to pursue these quiet things as a homemaker, but I think I could do even better by quieting my life in general. I consume too much information, ponder too many feelings, and in general, spend too little time in prayer.
In short, I want to explore the concept of "quiet."
I believe that most of us are completely inundated with NOISE: visual noise, auditory noise, informational noise, conversational noise, and emotional noise. Our modern world places a high value on excitement, pleasure, and exhilaration, and we can't get a word in edgewise with all the sensory information flying around our minds and hearts.
Our technological advancements have certainly freed up our time, but those spare moments have been replaced with more NOISE, noise, NOISE.
We squeeze in just a few more classes, degrees, and hours at work. We squeeze in another episode of Netflix, or another hour of sleep. We squeeze in some time for coffee with a friend, and we squeeze in a moment to hug our spouse. We squeeze in time at the gym, and then go on our way to squeeze through rush hour traffic just to squeeze in a meal with the family.
We are constantly squishing and squeezing our time to fit more and more NOISE.
Now it's not wrong to pursue learning, excitement, and the wonderful things the human experience offers, but I do think that many of us, especially myself, should consider consuming less noise and more QUIET. I think we could benefit from cutting out some of the noise, even if it's "good" noise.
I believe that this racket all around us has caused us to experience a loss of serenity. I feel I have been missing out on a level of serenity this summer, as it seems that every morning I wake up shocked that it is already time for another day. I've been wondering where each day has gone and questioning how I'm squeezing my time.
I want to grow into the quiet and away from the noise because for me, as a Christian, it is in the quiet when I hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. It is in the quiet that I am able to process life, and it is in the quiet when I am able to tenderly hold the ones I love close.
I think it's time for me to pursue the quiet and step away from the noise. I think it's time to lower the volume on the visual and informational noise I receive every day, and to maybe even reconsider what true serenity looks like for me.
Because I don't want life to rush past me as I constantly try to squish and squeeze it: I want to bask it in and truly experience the quiet moments.
Of course, I don't intend on being a hermit and throwing my smartphone into the lake... but I do plan on reevaluating my information input, and in general, reevaluating how much quiet I really need.
I do believe that in order to pursue balance and to live traditionally, we must include a heavy dose of serene quiet into our daily lives, as our ancestors did. I think we need to feel the rhythm of kneading bread or weeding, while we hear the birds chirp or our dog pant. I think we need to spend an evening watching a sunset or an afternoon with our phones on airplane mode.
I think it's time for me to pursue more walks in the garden and less hours on social media. And with that statement, I will be ending this blog post so that you too my friend, can get less screen time.
All my love,
xoxo,
Cait