The Power of a Power Outage: Two Days in Silence

photo credit: Martin Valko 

We had a silent retreat in Dallas last week: unexpected, air met heat met cool and the winds ripped trees like matchsticks. I was on the North Dallas Tollway with Edward and I was terrified. We saw stop signs flying, power lines freed from the confines of poles and trees turned on end. My eleven year-old told me to meditate.

It wasn't the scary moment that is interesting to me--I spent my elementary years in Tulsa (AKA Tornado Alley) so revisiting those days is not my preference. What is interesting to me is the silence we kept together while we waited for the power (and our lives) to come back on.

If it had been hot it would not have worked: silent retreats are best offered with a level of comfort: distractions of heat are left to the real professionals (think Thailand). But we had a beautiful few nights of cool dry breezes. Nature walked into our houses and stayed for a while.

No television. No cell service pumping ipads. No hum of the air conditioner or lights.

The absence of everything.

I found it lovely. I slept soundly. I listened for the creek frogs and the birds: the volume of both was amplified if not new and unknown.

Our city kept silence. Yes, we drove out looking for a cell tower signal to coordinate work and updates from Oncor, but in the in-between moments Edward found books, art and unfortunately the poison ivy found him on one of many "tree damage" nature hikes.

Neighbors quietly helped neighbors build growing piles of branches and leaves. At a Silent Retreat we call this "Seva" or service to others. We saw so much service to others last week. The choice to care rose from silence and the ability to look up and see the need. Generators were offered to those with medical needs. Those with power offered others refuge. On Lakewood Boulevard someone cut a tunnel through a very large downed tree and on Monday morning my car slipped through it perfectly. Thank you.

At a silent retreat we light a candle for morning meditation. Our city brought the candles out: civilization's first light. Homes and windows glowed with simplicity. We could mark the streets without power easily: little tea lights offered all we needed to see rather than the dozens of lights we turn on every night. We did more with less.

Silent retreats are dark: I am reminded of the Upaya Zen Center, Plum Village and Omega on night walks to my room: evenings are dark and bedtime comes early. White Rock Lake was stunning in its blackness: no cover of city light to reflect and absorb. Dark earth made way for dark sky and in the dark we looked more carefully for what we could see.

Yes--just like a silent retreat there were irritations: the melting freezer, the annoyance of experiencing how I kept flipping the light switches on, the garage door we had to manually operate. My patience was especially tested by the lack of traffic lights. I did a lot of breathing at those endless intersections.

All of them and none of these mattered, though against the backdrop of silence. They too, like the storm we all felt, passed and then I found myself back in the bliss of silence, knowing it was special and knowing it wouldn't last forever.

And on Tuesday it all came back "on": the noise of our lives: the call and response of email and text, the noise of lights and the sounds of the house. We were thrust back into the world as the world started working again. Hopefully the layer of last week is in us though: a reminder to stop, to look, to be grateful for what is, and to care.