As we head into the depths of winter I am always reminded of that in other parts of the world, people are experiencing the height of summer.

Where I live, December marks the beginning of winter. And in the Hudson Valley of New York, those winters are often cold, silent, and dark.

In a congregation I once served was a man who’d been there many years—not a noisy person, but one who was pretty loud in his dislike of silence in the Sunday service.

Three sanctuaries of silence come to mind as I think about creating more space for silence in my life.

When I was a child I used to fear the silence. One of the tortures I endured was being thrown into a small closet with no light, and being left there for days at a time.

The day Gerry and I moved to Neenah from Milwaukee was a long, exhausting one.

During my first year living in Seattle, I heard a news report of a woman being arrested for throwing a frozen chicken out her apartment in the middle of a crowd of runners in a 5K race.