The Sound of Silence

Keats said, "Thou still unravished bride of quietness, thou foster-child of silence and slow time..."
Coleridge said, "No voice; but oh! the silence sank like music on my heart..."

I noticed the silence sometime around 4 oclock. Normally our neighborhood is a cacophony of lifesounds: the chai man yelling that he has hot chai for sale, the gas man announcing that he is on our street with gas bottles, the drivers honking their horns at the guy going the wrong way down our one way street, the group of delinquint junior high boys beating a drum at the foot of the tower, the pack of stray dogs howling for howling's sake, the construction drilling on the street and in the apartment directly across from our door, and the many many many mosques singing that God is great and that we ought therefore to come to prayer.

But I noticed today, that is was strangely quiet. The chai man is not here today, and the gas man never came. There have been no cars, no drums, no dogs, no drilling. Silence. Beautiful, joyful, delightful, precious silence. Why? It is the eve of Kurban Bayram (or Eid, in the Arab world), the holiday of sacrifice.

We knew the holiday was coming. We heard the words in peoples' conversations. We saw rams marked with red paint for sale on the sides of the road. The sacrificed rams serve as a rememberance for when God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in place of his son (the Bible says Isaac, the Koran says Ishmael). We read that the sacrifice would take place in public, in the streets even. Will we see anything? Only tomorrow will tell.

One thing is certain, we haven't heard anything today, all praise to God! With the cacophony silenced, I've been able to be still and know the friendship of the Lamb of God, who took away the sins of the world as the ultimate sacrifice.

Mother Theresa said, "God is the friend of silence."
God said, "Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."