66 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2018 Silence is disappearing. It’s disappearing because we’re being trained to hate it. Accustomed as most of us are to constant motion and busyness, many of us structure our days to avoid silence at all costs. For one, it’s awkward. When the door of an elevator shuts on a group of strangers, the compul­ sion to fill the space with sound is nearly palpable. Silence is “dead air,” to borrow a term from the radio business for any gap in sound lasting longer than a second. Only today, it’s not just audible noises – the beeps and vibrations of our various personal devices – that break silence. Far more conse- quential is the onslaught of images and words with which they daily violate the interior silence of our souls. This rarely bothers most people, since silence, as well as being uncomfortable, can be fearsome. Leaving us alone with our thoughts, it forces us to address matters we often sidestep in our active outer lives. “Frightening,” “lonely,” Why the soul needs silence S T E P H A N I E B E N N E T T Endangered Habitat Just as we protect endangered natural habitats, so we must preserve the space that allows both speech and the soul to flourish. Photograph by Torkel Pettersson