No, I’m not suggesting that you stop listening to me. Why would you think that?
This morning, Armond Boudreaux, author of the impressive The Last Revolution trilogy, presents a simple image and a poignant thought:
Most of us don’t have enough imagination to see how beautiful and precious it all is. https://t.co/N9z2DuzlRW
— Armond Boudreaux (@armondboudreaux) October 23, 2026
It stopped me for a moment. Imagination matters, but I think something else matters more. I was put in mind of a particularly piercing moment from That Hideous Strength. Co-protagonist Jane Studdock has just had her first direct experience of God and is in the aftermath:
Words take too long. To be aware of all this and to know that it had already gone made one single experience. It was revealed only in its departure. The largest thing that had ever happened to her had, apparently, found room for itself in a moment of time too short to be called time at all. Her hand closed on nothing but a memory. And as it closed, without an instant’s pause, the voices of those who have not joy rose howling and chattering from every corner of her being.
“Take care. Draw back. Keep your head. Don’t commit yourself,” they said. And then more subtly, from another quarter, “You have had a religious experience. This is very interesting. Not everyone does. How much better you will now understand the Seventeenth-Century poets!” Or from a third direction, more sweetly, “Go on. Try to get it again. It will please the Director.”
But her defenses had been captured and these counterattacks were unsuccessful.
That beautiful, terrible phrase the voices of those who have not joy is one of C.S. Lewis’s best. I’ve borrowed it before this, and with this very application in mind.
Not all such voices are those of demons.
Our world is noisy. It’s probably noisier than at any previous time or place in history. The competition for your attention is particularly fierce. Let my inbox be submitted as Exhibit One.
Let’s be candid: defining noise is a tough job. Most of us would treat it the way we treat the equally difficult subject of dirt: “I know it when I see it.” In the interests of the discussion below, let’s treat noise as anything that bids for your attention, seeking to deflect you from what really matters to you at the moment. That way, we don’t have to deal with whether a noise must be audible, or whether we might treat a particular specimen of noise as valuable under altered circumstances.
Noise comes in many varieties. At the bottom of the distribution is “pure” noise: randomly generated by events under no conscious control. At the top is semantic noise: noise that seemingly speaks in a recognizable tongue in a meaningful way.
Pure noise is “ground” in the “figure and ground” sense. We learn over time to filter it out. The eye sees it or the ear hears it, but our filters prevent it from consuming any of our attention. That seemingly built-in filtering ability makes it possible to endure a great deal of the noise that arises from our surroundings.
Semantic noise is tougher. It has structure and apparent meaning. It may be relevant to you personally. It may even bear on some priority of yours that isn’t what you’re trying to concentrate on at the moment. Those characteristics make it a “teaser” that demands effort to exclude from your thoughts.
In our time, the greater part of the noise is semantic noise.
I could go into a long exposition here, but that’s unnecessary. Just return to Armond’s tweet above and contemplate the beauty of the sunset he depicted. Can you turn away the noise long enough to savor it? To appreciate the power and majesty of the forces, formless and formed, that produced it? To thank and praise God for the gift of such beauty?
The noise will not cease. Indeed, it might intensify. Beauty is its enemy. The soul must be diverted from beauty. All beauty flows from the great Enemy of noise, the Creator of all things.
It’s your job, as a soul that possesses discrimination and free will, to develop your ability to deny the noise your attention, at least for a little while. That’s not the same as “not hearing it.” You can’t do that. All you can do is fix your attention where it belongs: on the gift of beauty before you.
May God bless and keep you all.
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