A utility closet runs along the length of the long hallway that connects my living room to my dining room.

My water heater and furnace reside there behind a series of folding doors.

I don’t think about my furnace much, at least not very often during most of the year. In late October or early November, though, just past eleven at night, I’ll find myself in bed, watching TV until I feel sleepy, and, as the indoor temperature begins to descend into the mid-sixties, the furnace will kick into action, and I can’t help but pay attention.

For a few seconds, I’ll grapple with the dilemma of whether I should turn the volume up on the TV or just wait until the room hits the threshold temperature programmed in the thermostat for turning off the furnace, so as not to disturb my downstairs neighbors.

My furnace is old —and noisy. When it turns on, I’ll be irritated that I have to decide whether I have to meet its unwelcome noise with a louder noise, or if I just have to practice making peace with it.

There’s something about its sound that’s comforting.  From the whooshing of the pilot engaging the gas feed to the uneven hum of warm air traveling along the ductwork of my condo, when I hear the familiar sound, it becomes the biggest thing in my mind, and I know it’s working.

I suppose, guessing it to have provided over twenty years of service, I must conclude that its racket is a good thing.

Years ago, when preparing to head off to the Catskills to attend a spiritual retreat where I was going to be observing SILENCE for a week, I remember saying good-bye to my mother. She couldn’t believe that I would actually pay money to make this MY VACATION.

After expressing disbelief that I wanted to do this (after all, for years she had told people that I had been vaccinated with a phonograph needle, an expression other boomers might remember), she posed what she thought was a reasonable, motherly request.

“You’ll call me, won’t you?”

Irritated by her questioning my choices, as only a forty-something year-old child can be, I responded.

“I can’t call you. I’ll be in SILENCE…But — I know. How’s this? I’ll call you, and if you don’t hear anyone speak up on the other end, you’ll know it’s me and that everything is okay.”

Of course, I was being sarcastic, but I had already started to embrace a new understanding of and respect for SILENCE.

Silence is not the absence of activity, of life. It’s the absence of distraction. It’s an invitation to awareness.

It’s often in silence that you can understand Everything is okay.

The other night, when my furnace started to drown out Stephen Colbert’s monolog, I thought about the Paul Simon song, “The Sound of Silence.”

I’m not exactly sure what the lyrics mean, but it’s a compelling thought, that various sounds can fall under the umbrella of SILENCE. Silence actually turns up your ability to hear things.

For me, the different seasons seem to have distinctly different sounds of silence.

In the spring, I might observe the sounds of silence in raindrops splattering against a window.

During the summer, a day at the beach might include the sounds of children playing in the sand or the sound of water gathering in waves only a few hundred feet away. Like a wave itself, the swirling, rushing sound will peak in the front of my mind for a few moments then blend back into my consciousness.

In the winter, I might get lost in the muffled sounds of boots padding along a hardened layer of snow. Any one step is not very loud, but if you listen, you can hear the footsteps, and you can tell if someone is walking towards you or away from you.

And now, in November, silence in my world is marked by the not so melodic sound of my furnace kicking in.

I’ll sense my feet finally warming up under my quilt. In front of the flickering light from the TV, I’ll see a shadow of my dog India resting at the edge of my bed, licking her paws.

Maybe, I’ll even detect the sounds of my exhalations or heartbeat…and I’ll know everything is alright.

Accepting, appreciating, the different sounds of silence is no small thing.