Silence and Sunday

I'm taking a break from writing my next blog post for Living Lutheran website.  My spouse needed to be at church early to work with the youth choir, and he needs to stay after to practice with the handchime choir.  Ordinarily, I would have gone early and stayed late, but today, I decided we would go in 2 cars.  The thought of having some extra writing time during these months of many deadlines was just too tempting.

I'm writing about silence and finding the silence we need to hear the still, small voice of God in our noisy world.  I'll work a bit more on this blog post, and then I'll go to a church service which will undoubtably be too noisy for me.  And then there's the knowledge of the upcoming bustle of Holy Week.  I'm tired and headachy already.

What would happen if we had more silence on Sundays?  Most Protestants I know would probably implode if forced to sit in silence.  In most churches, I've noticed we have trouble building in a few minutes of silence as part of prayer time.

And let me be clear--I'm as guilty as everyone else.  When I'm the Assistant Minister, who in our church often leads part of the Prayer of the Church (which by now, we may be calling something different), I force myself to count during the time when people are supposed to offer up their prayers silently or out loud.  Otherwise, people will have all of ten seconds before I go rushing along.

Why is silence so scary?  Why must everything be so amplified?