Lessons From a Dying Minivan- Part 2

silence

Photo by Jamo Images on Unsplash (not my actual vehicle)

If a minivan is going to cost you an arm and a leg, it might as well teach you some life lessons, right? And not just the penny-saved-is-a-penny-earned variety.

In my last post, I wrote about how the surprising gift of a pleasant turn signal tuned me into the reconstructive work Jesus has been doing in my faith. But that’s not where the minivan lessons end, so I thought this could make a nice little series. For the minivan haters out there (yes, I see you), you need not like nor own one for the series to be relevant.

Today I want to talk about silence, a gift I didn’t ask for but one my dying minivan forced me to receive. A couple of months ago, on the road to its demise, our van’s entertainment system went out. This included the TV (audible kids’ gasp), radio, Bluetooth, navigation screen…no sound or visuals. I wasn’t kidding about that audible kids’ gasp, this tragic development shocked them. In the absence of entertainment, they turned on each other with an extraordinarily creative gusto. But there were also times of just…silence.

Sometimes that silence came at the price of handing my phone back to them to restore peace, which is why this is not a parenting post. But without my phone or the ability to play it over the sound system, my habit of fitting podcasts into the day’s commutes got derailed. Which has decreased the volume of content I get through each week.

But instead of feeling a deprivation of information, I’ve felt a richness of synthesis. Instead of constantly adding new content to what’s already buzzing around my brain, I’ve let that content sit and mature while I drive. As mature as you get in two months, at least. I’ve stayed with singular thoughts longer and connected them in a more intricate web of thought than I could before. In a way, the silence has been similar to the function of sleep- there’s been a repair, renewal, and synthesis of fragmented thoughts.

Silence is a well-documented, richly historical practice. I love the beginning chapters of John Mark Comer’s book Practicing the Way where he explores what it means to sit quietly with Jesus,

“Saint Ignatius of Loyola once called God ‘Love loving.’’ In doing so, he spoke for the millions of contemplatives down through history who have found sitting in the quiet and letting God love them to be the single most joyful experience this side of eternity; indeed, it is a kind of foretaste of eternity.”

Silence is a medium for meeting Jesus in this joyful way.

Now, I realize that driving is not the gold standard of silence, because it is still an active task. But, it is also a hallmark task of the Western world, one that is not going away, and one of many that contributes to the onslaught of efficiency, noise, and distraction.

But it doesn’t have to be! Every moment doesn’t have to be filled with noise, even if the option for noise is available. My new minivan’s sound system is alive and well, but I haven’t gone back to regularly using the radio or CarPlay

. The past two months were long enough to both change that habit and make it seem undesirable. Now, I crave the silence of the car. The radio feels grating. I still ardently love my podcasts, but I’ve shifted them to other parts of the day.

Powering off the sound, hearing only the muted roar of tires on pavement (and sound bites of Bluey floating from the backseat), has become something I crave. A place to meet Jesus throughout the day’s demands of efficiency.

You don’t need a dying minivan to power off the sound in your vehicle. In fact, I think it’s a greater act of resistance to forgo a technology that is begging you to engage it. And spiritual acts of resistance are the way we push through the forces that seek to derail our discipleship. Try it out? After a couple of days or weeks, you might be surprised to see where Jesus meets you. And I’d love to hear about it if He does.