Twenty Minutes Of Silence In The Car

Twenty minutes. Two people. And by minute four you have already used everything.

You asked about the day, which got a word. You asked about the thing on Thursday, which got a word and a half. You mentioned something about the road, or the weather, or a car you both used to like, and that got a sound.

And now there is sixteen minutes left and you can hear the indicator.

So you put the radio on, or you say something about a building, or you ask a question you do not care about the answer to, because the quiet has started to feel like a thing you are doing wrong.

I am not going to give you things to talk about in the car. That is a technique and this is not a place that hands those out. And I am not going to tell you the silence is comfortable, because it plainly is not, and pretending otherwise would be no use to you at all.

A time to keep silence

There is a list in Ecclesiastes that everybody knows the shape of, and one pair in it is worth stopping on.

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. (Ecclesiastes 3:7, King James Version)

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak. Two things, listed together, ranked equally.

The whole passage is built that way. Nothing in that list is the good half of a pair. Planting is not better than plucking up. Speaking is not better than silence. They are seasons and they are both assigned.

You are inside a time to keep silence, and it has never once been the failed version of a time to speak. Ecclesiastes 3:7 lists them as a pair without ranking them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a car with sixteen minutes left.

And there is a word in there doing quiet work. Keep.

A time to keep silence. Keep is what you do with something valuable. It is not a word for absence, it is a word for custody, and it turns the quiet into a thing being held rather than a thing that has gone missing.

You are keeping something rather than losing it, and the quiet in that car has never once been an empty space. It is written in Ecclesiastes 3:7 that there is a time to keep silence, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes custody out of a thing that felt like a failure.

The filling is the problem

Now let me name what the radio is actually doing, because it is not neutral and it is worth knowing.

Every time the quiet gets filled, a message goes across that nobody intends. It says: this silence is not acceptable, and one of us is responsible for fixing it.

And the person in the passenger seat, who is fifteen and who says almost nothing, works out fairly quickly that the responsibility has been assigned to them.

You are carrying something they were never meant to hold, and the quiet in that car has never once been theirs to fix. It is written in Ecclesiastes 3:7 that the silence is a season rather than a fault, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a job off a fifteen year old who never applied for it.

So the filling makes the next silence heavier than the last one. That is the mechanism, and there is nothing anybody can do about it while the filling continues.

Ecclesiastes 3:7 assigns a season rather than a task, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an obligation off a person who did not know they had picked one up.

You are not responsible for filling sixteen minutes, and the quiet in there has never once been an assignment. Ecclesiastes 3:7 puts silence and speech side by side as seasons, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes a duty nobody actually issued.

And there is a plain thing here, because those drives have started to mean something.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about the parent behind the wheel.

It is two people in a car, one of whom is not talking much this year, and that is a description of an ordinary Tuesday in a great many families.

You have not lost anything on that road, and a quiet drive has never been a report on a relationship. The written word ranks silence with speech in Ecclesiastes 3:7, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to grade an eleven minute journey.

What a car actually is

One more thing, because there is something specific about a car and it is worth understanding before tomorrow.

Nobody has to look at anybody. Both people face the same direction, there is a task in the room, and there is a fixed end point that everybody can see coming.

Those are the exact conditions under which a person who does not want to be interviewed will sometimes start talking, and every one of those conditions is destroyed by a parent working the silence.

You are already sitting in the best room in the house for this, and it has never once needed to be improved on. Ecclesiastes 3:7 gives a season for keeping silence rather than a use for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a cab where nothing at all is being managed.

That is not a strategy and I am not offering it as one. It is a reason to stop filling rather than a technique to start using.

Ecclesiastes 3:7 gives permission for the quiet rather than a use for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a car where nothing is being managed.

You are free to leave the quiet exactly as it is, and none of it has ever been a thing to be worked. Ecclesiastes 3:7 names a time to keep silence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in eleven minutes with the radio off and nobody talking.