For as long as I can remember, I have fallen asleep with the sounds of the world happening all around me.
My childhood home is in a historic neighborhood of downtown Orlando. It’s almost one-hundred years old, with handmade crown molding and thin glass windows, through which I can hear all of the downtown sounds: the rush of traffic, the squeal of a siren, the whistle of a train—a man-made lullaby right outside my window.
Through these thin glass windows, the narrow lots mean we can hear the next-door-neighbor’s business, too—the screaming matches, the kids cannonballing into the pool on a hot summer day, the cars starting and backing out of the driveway.
I am accustomed to this—the idea that, in simply living our life, our very movements serve as white noise to people like me, people who have always fallen asleep to the sound of cars and sirens and trains.
I am a child of the city. I have never not known what it is to live in the midst of a metropolis. I was born in a big city, moved to a big city when I was three, moved to another big city for college, then moved to the nation’s biggest city for postgrad. I’m a city junkie, chasing after the biggest and loudest I can find, incrementally moving the volume notch higher as I go.
A few weeks ago, I visited my grandparents at their home in northeastern Georgia. They live in a rural neighborhood, mainly surrounded by woods, and each property is at least one or two acres wide. Their house overlooks a quaint pond, from which you can see a sliver of golf course, a hint of a hill that slides into a bigger lake. Trees stand sentry in the yard, a small stone path leads downhill to a tiny little dock.
My boyfriend, Scott, was visiting with me. One morning, we woke and stepped outside, into the crisp, early-fall air. The breeze blew soft and cool around us as we looked down at the pond, at the dull brown leaves riding the air to their final resting place.
“It’s so quiet,” he marveled, shaking his head. Like me, Scott comes from cities—born in Atlanta, he grew up in Orlando, then moved to Miami for college and law school, where he still lives today. It’s quite possible we’ve had equal amounts of sound exposure in our shared years.
“I know,” I replied, taking it all in.
All we could hear was this: the sounds of leaves rustling, of water lapping lightly on the pond, birds chirping, squirrels rustling about, faint tinkles of a wind chime.
Nonexistent was the faint but ever-present roar of cars driving on the highway, a sound that exists in every city I’ve ever called home. The sound of an ambulance rushing to its next patient, or a train crying out its presence—nowhere to be heard.
Standing there, in the early morning light of a clear fall morning, I wondered this: if it can be this noiseless, this still, in the backwoods of modern-day rural Georgia, how quiet might’ve it been when the Earth was formed? When God first laid his hand upon the expanse of dirt, dense and moist, was the loudest sound that of a nearby branch brushing another? Were the trees their greenest green, the oceans and lakes their bluest blue? Before God made Adam out of mud, before he pulled one of Adam’s ribs to craft Eve, what did Earth sound like?
There is only one chapter in the Bible where humanity does not yet exist: Genesis 1. At the end of this chapter, God states that he will make mankind in His own image, and blesses them to be fruitful and multiply and rule over every living creature. But we don’t actually meet these figures until Genesis 2:7, when we are introduced to אדם—Hebrew for man, which can be transliterated as Adam.
But before this, before God ordained man to steward the earth and its resources, before the Fall, when man’s sinful desire corrupted all things on Earth, there was only stillness. Emptiness.
Genesis 1:3 tells us that the first thing God forms on Earth is light. He separates the light from the darkness, calling the light day and the darkness night. I try to imagine the Earth as an empty orb, lit only by the sun and darkened only by its disappearance. It’s hard to conceptualize. Theologian Charles Spurgeon has said that, at this point, the Earth was “shrouded in darkness”—He goes so far as to call it “chaos.” It was formless; empty of all beauty and wonder. All things, nature or artifact, were absent.
At this point, what sounds might’ve there been? Does light make sound? And, even then, from what source did the light come? This is before God made the Sun—that happens in Genesis 1:16.
Long ago, I heard a Louie Giglio sermon where he talks about a supernova, the Vela Pulsar, which shoots radio frequency out of itself and into the universe. This frequency can only be heard with radio telescopes. In this sermon, Giglio takes the sounds of the supernovas and slows them down, creating a haunting rhythm made entirely from the sounds of the Earth. Some of the stars click and pulse, some of them have eerie melodies, as if they were a string section in an orchestra. I’ve often wondered if these were the sounds of the formless, shapeless Earth.
Then, Genesis 1:6 shows God forming a vault (otherwise known as the sky) between the waters, to separate it from air. Now, we have this: the sounds of the stars singing, and the waters thrashing violently.
In Genesis 1:10, God forms dry ground and calls it “land.” Can land make a sound without being disturbed? This land is unlike any land we know: it predates vegetation, predates the life treading its surface. It’s likely that this land was just dirt, rocks, and sand. Maybe, then, the sound was only of rocks crumbling, of hissing sand as water lapped its shore.
In the following verse, God forms vegetation. I love Spurgeon’s comment on this: “Observe the remarkable fact that, no sooner had God made the dry land appear, than it seemed as if he could not bear the sight of it in its nakedness. What a strange place this world must have looked, with its plains and hills and rooks and vales without one single blade of grass, or a tree, or a shrub; so at once, before that day was over, God threw the mantle of verdure over the earth, and clad its mountains and valleys with forests and plants and flowers, as if to show us that the fruitless is uncomely in God’s sight.”1
I think this is where the sounds of the earth became drastically different. Where once we had waves crashing, rocks falling, and stars singing: we now have grass thrashing in the wind, the leaves of trees rustling. We have sounds that are imperceptible to the human ear: plants growing, trees reaching up to the sky. Fruit mustering its strength to grow from a tiny seed, to pop into existence. Acorns falling to the ground. Plants crying out in a state of distress, lacking in water or sunlight.
Genesis 1:20 shows us God creating the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky. I love to imagine the fish swimming in the open sea, dolphins arching high above the water, without threat, without fear. The birds of all kinds—seagulls and blue jays and eagles alike—chirping and singing, wings spread wide as they ride the air. The sound of water, of trees, of birds singing, of dolphins splashing. How peaceful.
In Genesis 1:24, God creates livestock and all of the creatures that move along the ground. Chickens and cows and pigs and leopards and elephants and wolves. I think about these animals, their paws touching the ground, disturbing the dirt and clearing paths in the grass. I think of cows mooing, horses neighing, pigs snorting, their cries heard across the land. I think of all the braying and mewing and roaring these animals add to the world: the sounds, previously unheard, only God’s ear for them to befall.
I will never not be enraptured by the idea of a world so silent. As much as I consider myself to be a city girl, I grow weary of the constant hum of a populated land. I often find myself considering the quiet that first existed, the peace that encompassed the world before man tread its ground.
I wonder what it would be like to exist in a world like this, where all you can hear are the stars singing, the waters thrashing, the rocks crumbling, the leaves rustling, the fish splashing, the birds chirping, the livestock braying. The hum of a life unmarred by the Fall. The sounds of tranquility. Not a human in sight or sound, just the knowledge of stillness, the knowledge that you have been loved enough to be created, and that there is more to come, so much more to come.
What I’m Currently Reading:
The Book of Charlie by David Von Drehle
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
What I’m Listening To:
1989 (Taylor’s Version) by Taylor Swift
Peace Songs by Good Shepherd Collective
“Rumors” by Ross Lynch and The Driver Era
“The Only Living Boy in New York” by Simon & Garfunkel
“Regressa” by Kaz Moon
“Graceland Too” by Phoebe Bridgers
One Thing I Want to Share With the World Right Now:
My absolute favorite makeup company, Glossier, just relaunched their original lip balm formula for a limited time for their holiday collection. The flavors are hot cocoa and cookie butter. Let me be honest and say that the hot cocoa lip balm is all I’ve been wearing for the past week—it’s so moisturizing and yummy. Go get yourself some.
Charles Spurgeon, 1834-1892.