The Power of the Pause

As I write, I am sitting in the café section of McDonalds, surrounded by the sounds of orders being placed and picked up, milk steaming and swirling and the low, incessant mumble of patrons conversing in booths by the back wall. Every now and then a shrill beep is emitted into the air which is already buzzing with noise…It is the alert that an order is ready. The young man behind the counter calls in a loud voice, ‘order 129…’ or ‘order 130…’ or failing that, ‘the skinny soy latte and banana bread?’

And in this low, droning environment (interspersed with moments of chaos) I have decided to write on the power of silence.

Or more specifically, the power of the pause.

So what is the difference between silence and a pause?

Silence is the lack of sound and movement. Silence is an external condition that allows us to experience inner stillness. We run to the Mountains and the rivers and pitch our tents in the back of Burke. We mothers might climb into our wardrobes or our children’s cubbies or our showers for that blissful state of silence. The problem with silence is that it is dependent on all our externals lining up and therefore it is not always attainable when we need it.

While silence helps us to cultivate inner stillness, it is not the pause.

So what then, is the pause?

The pause is the inner stillness.

The pause is where we step away from the man-made world and into what I will call the real world. The world where actual life exists and truth resides quietly, untouched by the chaos. A pause is not a mystical experience or an emotional or sentimental state of being. It is a re-connection with what we already know. Or a gentle easing into we need to know. In the pause, we touch life the way our Creator intended it and everything within us finds alignment. We can breathe and re-orientate ourselves.

The busier we are, the easier it is to lose touch with the pause and start marching to the rhythm of the man-made world, our goals and the demands of life, often without thought or organisation. We simply respond and react and as such we can find ourselves on a path we have not deliberately chosen. We become a twig in a current, thinking we have control, but in reality we are responding to the external influences and not commandeering our lives from a deep sense of still.

Because pause is an internal state, it is independent of the external state of silence. The pause can take place amidst the chaos, untouched by the externals. The pause, practiced regularly, can become a way of life. When we live out of a sense of pause, we notice the person who God might want us to smile at today. We see the couple pushing a pram under a sunny Summer sky and remember that life is changing, that our children are growing, that family is a blessing. We hear the whisper of God saying from behind, ‘go this way’ or ‘go that.’

Life become slower and more purposeful; we can accomplish what we need to do without reacting to the demands in frenetic bursts of unconstrained activity, but rather we respond to life in controlled, peaceful and deliberate movements. We live out of quiet rather than responding to noise.

Silence is wonderful but the pause is powerful. It can be taken with us. Practiced. Listened to. Even in a McDonald’s café :)

Take on the power of the pause. Practice it and cherish it. Life is found within it.