SING TO THE POWER
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Children
SESSION 7: THE POWER OF SILENCE
BY REV. LYNN UNGAR
© Copyright 2012 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 11/8/2014 2:42:07 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
SESSION OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
The power of air is the power of silence, of clearing away the buzz of constant distractions so that we can listen to what is truly important both inside us and around us. In this session participants hear about acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, who, in the process of recording the sounds of nature, has become an activist preserving silence — places where there are no human-made sounds. Through both practicing silence themselves and by listening intently to the sounds around them and sounds drawn from nature, participants learn about the cost of the incessant noise of our modern world and how we can create spaces of peaceful silence.
GOALS
This session will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
SESSION-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Story — One Square Inch | 10 |
Activity 2: Sound Observation | 14 |
Activity 3: Nature Sounds | 12 |
Activity 4: Square Inch of Silence | 14 |
Faith in Action: Exercising Air Power | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Sharing Joys and Sorrows | 10 |
Alternate Activity 2: Distraction Experiment | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Find a place where you can be quiet with your thoughts. Close your eyes and breathe deeply for several minutes, perhaps repeating a word or phrase to separate yourself from the activities of the day. When you feel settled and relaxed, consider:
SESSION PLAN
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
The opening ritual for this program invites children to practice leadership and experience the power of a group coming together in sacred space.
Gather the children in a circle around the chalice. Invite them to take a deep breath and release it, and create a deep silence for a moment.
Invite the day's worship leader to select a reading from the Opening Words Basket and read it aloud. Place the air symbol on the cloth, saying, "I bring this symbol of air, the atmosphere which gives us life, although we never see it." As needed, assist the worship leader to light the chalice.
Sing the song "Sing to the Power." Include the zipper words from previous sessions and add today's zipper words "silent space."
Invite participants to hold hands in a circle. Explain, in these words or your own:
Each time the group meets, we will focus on ways we find and express our power. As part of each opening circle, we will send a pulse of energy, or power, around the circle.
Begin the power pulse by squeezing the hand of the person on the left, who will then squeeze the hand of the person their left, followed by each person in rapid succession, sending the power pulse around the circle several times.
Conclude the power pulse, while still holding hands. Ask the group to take a deep breath together, bringing their hands up as they breathe in, and bringing their hands down as they breathe out.
Return the reading to the Opening Words Basket and extinguish the chalice.
Including All Participants
Participants who are uncomfortable being touched may be given the opportunity to opt out of the circle during the time when participants are holding hands for the power pulse.
ACTIVITY 1: STORY — ONE SQUARE INCH (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read or tell the story to the group.
After the story, invite the group to be silent for a moment to think about the story.
Then, ask participants to recap the story in their own words. What they recall indicates what they found most meaningful or memorable.
Say, in these words or your own:
When we think about pollution in our environment we generally think about trash, or water pollution, or air pollution, or greenhouse gases. We do not often think of noise pollution, but there is plenty of it around. The sounds created by cars, refrigerators, power tools—all our technology—mean our world is noisier, more frantic, and more distracting than the world of our ancestors hundreds of years ago. Our human sounds also affect the animals around us. Blue whales used to be able to communicate across 1,000 miles of ocean. Now, they only hear one another for 100 miles. Our world is growing louder. Quiet places are getting harder and harder to find.
Lead a discussion using these questions:
ACTIVITY 2: SOUND OBSERVATION (14 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants tune in to noises that fill a variety of spaces yet might ordinarily escape attention.
Tell the group they will go on a listening project. Tell them where, how, for how long, and with whom they will walk. Say:
Your task is to identify as many sounds as possible in each environment you visit, for example, a car, a light switch, a voice, a scratching sound, a bird call. Classify the sounds you hear: Mechanical/electronic? Human? Or non-human?
Give each participant a clipboard with paper and pencil. Emphasize that in order to hear as many sounds as possible, participants will themselves need to be silent.
Make the listening tour. Then, return to the meeting space.
Post blank newsprint. Have participants read aloud the sounds they noted, and record this information on newsprint. Capture all the sounds everyone heard. Sounds heard by multiple people only need to be written once.
Then, ask the group to classify each sound: Was it mechanical/electronic, human, or non-human? Make a red dot next to each technological sound, a blue dot next to each human-made sound, and a green dot next to each non-human sound.
Engage the group to reflect with questions such as:
Including All Participants
If any member of your group has significant hearing loss, you may wish to choose a different activity.
ACTIVITY 3: NATURE SOUNDS (12 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This activity encourages a sense of connection with the non-human neighbors we hear around us, by directing participants' attention to natural sounds they may not notice in everyday life and inviting them to guess the sources of the sounds.
Invite the participants to sit comfortably, and to close their eyes. Play sounds, one at a time. After each sound, ask the participants to describe what they heard and try to identify the sound.
Share as many sounds as time allows. Then, invite participants to reflect on the experience with questions such as:
Point out that it is hard to understand and appreciate a sound or its source, if we are not willing to really pay attention to it. Listening to nature and learning to identify its sounds reminds us that we share this world with many other beings, and that we need to make sure that there is a place for each one.
Including All Participants
Provide headphones for participants who may need to hear sounds at a higher volume.
ACTIVITY 4: SQUARE INCH OF SILENCE (14 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants create a personal "square inch of silence," and reflect on situations in which they might like to try it.
Say in these words, or your own:
We are going to see what it might be like to create our own "square inch of silence"— a moment of retreat and reflection. In times of anxiety, anger or simply distraction, it is an excellent skill to be able to find a calm, still center inside oneself.
Invite participants to get comfortable, out of arms reach of one another, on the floor, a chair (or, on a pillow or mat). Read the meditation in Leader Resource 1 slowly, leaving pauses between sentences for participants to experience their square inch of silence. Ring a bell or chime at the end of the meditation and invite participants to open their eyes.
Guide participants to reflect on the experience, with questions such as:
Including All Participants
Participants who tend to be physically active may benefit from having a quiet, manipulable item, such as Silly Putty or clay, to engage their hands during the meditation.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that the session is almost over and that the group will now work together as a community to clean the meeting space. Ask everyone to clean their own area and put away the materials they were using, and then to clean another area or help someone else. No one should sit in the circle until the meeting space is clean.
Gather the group in a circle. Tape the "silence" circle (Leader Resource 1) outside the "Air" quadrant of the Circle of Elements mural, in the position shown on Session1, Leader Resource 3. Say:
Air power is the power of silence, of removing distractions and extra noise so that we can be fully present.
Invite each participant to take a bead and string it on an elastic and, as they do so, to take a deep breath and then let it out.
Ask the day's closing worship leader to choose a reading from the Closing Words Basket and read it aloud (or, to read aloud the reading they prepared after the previous session).
Ask for (and record) volunteers to lead the opening and closing readings for the next session. Offer the volunteers a copy of Session 1, Leader Resource 1, Opening Words for Basket or Session 1 Leader Resource 5, Closing Words for Basket that they may take home to choose and practice their readings. Tell them they are also welcome to choose their reading from a basket when they come next time.
You may wish to invite the opening worship volunteer to bring a symbol of air for the centering space.
Invite participants to put the bracelets in the Closing Words Basket.
Distribute the Taking It Home handout. Thank and dismiss participants.
FAITH IN ACTION: EXERCISING AIR POWER
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
By this session, the group should have identified a project and planned the elements needed in order to complete this project. This session, then, is when the group will actually do the activity that expresses their own air power.
Including All Participants
Make sure your transportation plan is accessible for all participants, and that all will have full access at any off-site location.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Reflect on and discuss with your co-leader(s):
Approach the director of religious education for guidance, as needed.
TAKING IT HOME
Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
IN TODAY'S SESSION... the children heard about Gordon Hempton's One Square Inch of Silence campaign to preserve spaces in which the only sounds are the sounds of nature. We toured our surroundings, listening for every sound we could hear, and categorized sounds as mechanical/electronic, human, or non-human. We talked about how the sounds around us affect us. We tested our familiarity with the sounds of nature by trying to identify particular sounds. We practiced creating our own square inch of silence, in a meditation.
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. What kind of ambient noise is there typically in your household? Do children do homework with music, television or videos playing? Do you generally have music, television, or videos playing during meals, or when people are simply relaxing together? Do you have times when you silence as much background noise as possible? If so, when and why?
What kinds of noise come into your home from outside? Which are sounds of nature? Which are sounds of technology, or other human activity? Choose a time when your chances are good, and work together to consciously create silence in your home. Then discuss how it went.
FAMILY GAME. As the children did in this session, your family might want to take a silent tour around your home and yard. What sounds do you hear? Make sure everyone listens for small sounds, such as the hum of a computer or refrigerator, as well as more obtrusive sounds. If you go outside, how long can you go before you hear a human-generated sound?
FAMILY ADVENTURE. Take a trip to a forest preserve, park or rural area to listen for the sounds of nature. Perhaps, like acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, family members will want to record the sounds they hear. Take note of how long you can go without hearing a human-made sound, such as an airplane or car.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: SHARING JOYS AND SORROWS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Say:
Our community is like a bowl that holds all of our lives. The joys and sorrows which affect each person's life send ripples through all of our lives.
Invite participants, as they are moved, to pick up a stone, drop it gently (!) in the bowl of water, and share aloud a joy or a sorrow which has affected their life in recent days. Say they may drop their stone in silence; it is okay to keep their joys or sorrows private. You might go first, to model.
Once all who wish to have shared, affirm all the words people have spoken and the thoughts and feelings that remain inside each person's head and heart.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: DISTRACTION EXPERIMENT (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants experience the effect of everyday, environmental noise on their ability to engage in tasks that require concentration.
Tell the group they will try an experiment. Each person will have two timed chances to play a video game. The first chance will be while the room is quiet. The second will be while there is music playing and other participants are talking or making noise.
If you have more than one video game device, divide the group into smaller groups to share each device. Post a separate scoring sheet (newsprint, divided into two columns "With Noise"/"Without Noise" for each group.
For each round, designate a timekeeper. Show them how to use the stopwatch to "start" and "stop" a round. Decide how long a round will be—e.g., one minute, three minutes etc.—based on how much time you have for the activity and how many rounds you will need to have so that every participants gets to play twice,
Encourage the group to keep silent during the "Without Noise" rounds and to chatter or otherwise make noise during the "With Noise" rounds. For each round, record the score that the player got.
Once every child has received one score in the "With Noise" column and one score in the "Without Noise" column, put away the game devices and gather the group. Look together at the scores. Discuss, using these questions:
Variation
If you have time, play more rounds to explore how different kinds of noise affect the scores people get. For instance, does just having music playing make a difference? Does the volume make a difference? Does it matter whether people are talking in the background or talking to the person who is playing the game? If engaging in conversation appears to reduce players' scores, what might this say about the effect of talking on the phone while driving?
Including All Participants
Be sure to choose a challenge task every participant has the ability to accomplish. If any students have fine-motor challenges, look into adaptive technologies and modified devices; parents may know of electronic game-playing devices their children are able to use.
SING TO THE POWER: SESSION 7:
STORY: ONE SQUARE INCH
On a moss-covered log, in the middle of the Hoh Rain Forest, in Olympic National Park in Washington State, there's reddish, square-ish stone. This stone may be the smallest, least noticeable marker ever for a really big idea. This stone marks one square inch of silence.
To understand this unique yet ever-so-ordinary marker, you have to understand Gordon Hempton, the man behind the project that is One Square Inch of Silence. Hempton is an acoustic ecologist—that is to say, he travels around the world recording the sounds of nature. Here's what he said in an interview with Newsweek about how he came to such an odd career:
I was driving from Seattle to Madison, Wis., and decided to sleep in a cornfield for the night. I didn't want to pay for a hotel. As I lay there I heard crickets, and rolling thunder in the background, which captivated me. The thunderstorm came, and I truly listened. The storm passed on, and as I lay there, drenched, the only thought in my mind was, how could I be 27 years old and never have truly listened before? I then took my microphone and tape recorder and went everywhere, obsessively listening—freight trains, hobos—it was a flood of sensation. I realized how we need to hear to survive.
For Gordon Hempton, silence isn't the complete absence of any sound. It's natural quiet, undisturbed by any mechanical, human-made sounds, so that all you hear is the natural world. When Hempton started trying to identify quiet places in 1984, he found just 21 places where you could go for 15 minutes without hearing a single human-made sound. In 2007 he could find only three.
One of those three places is the square inch of silence marked by the little red stone. Hempton and other volunteers are trying to preserve the silence of that small spot, knowing that keeping it completely undisturbed by noise pollution can protect 1000 square miles around it. They are trying to get airlines to agree not to fly over the park, and are trying to get the National Park Service to recognize quiet as a feature of our national parks that needs to be preserved.
Why bother to try to preserve this natural quiet? This is how Hempton put it, in the introduction to the book One Square Inch of Silence:
Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything. ... It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature, but to each other... .Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost, and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence you must hear it.
If you sat on the log by that stone, you wouldn't hear the sounds of your everyday life. You wouldn't hear cars or leaf blowers, or the hum of computers or refrigerators. But you might hear wind moving the leaves of trees 300 feet above you, or the distant call of an elk, or the hollow knock of a woodpecker searching for bugs, or the patter of rain sifting through branches. And maybe you would experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence.
SING TO THE POWER: SESSION 7:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: MEDITATION — SQUARE INCH OF SILENCE
Please close your eyes, and place your hands, palms open, in your lap. Shrug your shoulders up toward your ears. Push them up as high and tight as they will go, and then let your shoulders drop and relax. Imagine that you are sitting on the mossy log next to the stone that marks the One Square Inch of Silence in the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park.
Listen. Around you there is only the sound of birds, and of wind moving through the trees. Still yourself, to match that quiet. You are simply a piece of the silence. You are as large as the great trees above you. You are as tiny as the raindrop caught on the tip of a leaf. Make your ears large, your mouth small. Just for a moment, for one square inch of time, become still, become silent.
SING TO THE POWER: SESSION 7:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: "SILENCE" CIRCLE
FIND OUT MORE
Visit the One Square Inch of Silence website (at onesquareinch.org/). Read an article about one person's visit with Gordon Hempton (at www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3627).