Have you noticed we are bombarded every day with noise? Loud noise! Even louder noise!!

It seems every ad that comes on the radio has someone shouting at the top of his voice over the most horrible noise that’s supposed to be music. To add even more to this horror they add an echo so it sounds the person is shouting down a well.

I used to do voice over work but that has dried up as I don’t talk fast enough and have too strong an English accent.

The majority of music today comprises a few words that is repeated over and over again sung against a background of loud repetitive noise.

Why is it?

To grab our attention?

Even on the television the news starts with loud noise, I suppose to grab our attention. Gone are the days of the happy jingles. A loud voice, over more crashing background noise, hurriedly gives us the news headlines with not one good bit of news. That is left to the very end so we can feel nice as we have been swamped with the disasters and murders and Trump and the Russian probe, and Trump and his tweets, and the overpaid sports celebrities who think by not standing for their nation’s flag is going to change the injustices of the poor and oppressed. Perhaps giving these people they say they are championing a slice of their pay may be a better statement?

We see them shouting and screaming as they rage at the cameras. What they are trying to say is just noise.

Even the appliances around us from garden equipment, cleaning equipment to medical equipment that are essential to a new born baby’s survival, push out noise. Loud noise. Noise that rattles the brain.

Our environment is so noisy now our ears have to combat with this torture.

Silence now shocks me.

Yes. It is so strange. Almost alien.

I was at church last Sunday evening. It was a prayer meeting. Prayer should mean silence. But even there silence was at a minimum. It lasted less than a minute. The leader started praying. Not loud but just enough to be annoying. Then other people started and the murmurings combined together became a noise. Yes, a quiet noise but the silence was gone.

What does silence mean to me today?

Silence is everything. It is peace. I can reflect on my life. It is a reprieve from the noise.

The loud noise.

“There is a time for everything: a time to be silent and a time to speak” – Ecclesiastes 3; 7b.