Latest / The Seed Project / What Silence Makes Room For

Transcript

What Silence Makes Room For · The Seed Project

• 0:01
  Hey, friend.
• 0:02
  Welcome to Send a Seed.
• 0:03
  I'm Charlotte Edwards, and I believe small seeds create big impact.
• 0:08
  Each week, we'll plant one.
• 0:10
  Let's dig in.
• 0:12
  My mom and I were talking recently, and she asked me a question.
• 0:17
  She asked me what I thought quiet meant.
• 0:20
  And I thought it was a strange question, but she went on to say that she had a project, or really a paper to write when she was in school to write about what quiet meant.
• 0:34
  In her paper she wrote that quiet for her was sitting outside in a pasture listening to the birds sing.
• 0:42
  Well, unfortunately, her teacher didn't agree, and she failed the assignment because I guess birds aren't quiet, at least not according to her teacher.
• 0:53
  But, you know, the more and more I think about it, and as we were having a conversation, the more I think my mom was right.
• 1:00
  Because when someone asks me what quiet sounds like, I don't picture complete silence.
• 1:06
  I picture sitting on my back porch early in the morning, hearing the birds outside, The wind moving through the trees or my dogs wandering around the yard.
• 1:18
  I picture sounds of life, not just the sounds of noise, and I think that's where the difference is.
• 1:25
  Because most of us don't live in silence.
• 1:27
  We live in noise Notifications, emails, televisions, podcasts, social media can go on and on from breaking news, text messages.
• 1:38
  We are inundated with noise.
• 1:42
  We live in a world that has a constant hum and never seems to stop talking.
• 1:49
  I spend many of my days in a hospital.
• 1:49
  Talk about a noisy place.
• 1:49
  Monitors beeping, alarms sounding, phones ringing, conversations overlapping.
• 1:49
  It's quite overstimulating and some days I just really don't realize how loud my world's become until I finally step out of those four walls and suddenly I can feel my shoulders drop.
• 2:13
  I can breathe a little deeper, and I can think again, not because the world became silent, but because the noise got turned down.
• 2:22
  And if I'm honest, I think we've become uncomfortable with quiet.
• 2:25
  The moment things get still, we reach for our phones, we turn on the TV, or start another podcast.
• 2:33
  We fill the space because quiet has a way of introducing us to ourselves, and sometimes that's the very thing we've been trying to avoid.
• 2:46
  Maybe that's why quiet feels so rare these days.
• 2:50
  Not because silence is hard to find, but because we've stopped making space for it.
• 2:57
  Space to think and to pray, space to notice and to listen.
• 3:04
  And here's what I've come to believe.
• 3:06
  The most important things in life are usually whispered.
• 3:10
  Gratitude whispers.
• 3:11
  Wisdom whispers.
• 3:14
  God whispers.
• 3:17
  Love and wonder whisper.
• 3:21
  You almost never hear them when life is screaming at you.
• 3:26
  Which makes me wonder, how much are we missing?
• 3:29
  How many beautiful things pass by because we're filling every empty moment?
• 3:34
  Every car ride, walk, waiting room, every spare minute with more and more noise.
• 3:43
  So here's your seed for the week.
• 3:45
  Find five minutes of quiet, whatever quiet means to you.
• 3:50
  Maybe it's sitting on the porch or a walk outside.
• 3:54
  Maybe it's drinking your coffee before the rest of the house wakes up.
• 3:58
  Or simply turning everything off.
• 4:02
  No agenda, no productivity, no self-improvement.
• 4:08
  Five minutes to listen because you never know what you might hear when the noise finally settles.
• 4:15
  A prayer, an answer, a memory, or a little bit of peace.
• 4:22
  And who knows?
• 4:24
  Maybe my mom was right all along.
• 4:26
  Maybe quiet sounds a lot like birds singing in a pasture.
• 4:34
  That's your seed.
• 4:35
  Now go plant something good