Borrowing the Peace of Hushed Places

Welcome to V E R D A N T

A light breeze carries the scent of soil and ripening fruit as we walk toward the raspberry rows. The only sounds are the soft give of grass and dirt beneath our feet and the door of the farm store closing a few paces back. I carry a small turquoise basket ready to be filled.

My teenage son walks the length of the row not looking for anything. He’s here for the atmosphere, not just the blue sky and sparse clouds, but that feeling of being transported into a different, quieter way of being.

I stop at a cluster of leaves and fruit to give a gentle tug on a dark pink raspberry. If it comes off with ease, it’s ready. Warm and soft, I let the delicate fruit fall into my hand. If not, I leave it on the bush to sweeten. The longer I linger in one spot, the more berries I see hiding under the leaves, the more bees I hear singing to the raspberry flowers. 

My middle daughter saunters down the row and my youngest skips toward me. We hunt for berries and these youngest two begin to absorb the calm. When our baskets tumble over with too many raspberries, we make our way to the porch of the farm store, rocking and talking in the wooden chairs, our fingers stained pink with berry juice. 

The hush distracts from the tendency for sibling bickering. 

The hush restores us in the busyness of summer’s camps, teen jobs, block parties, concerts, and road trips. 

The hush muffles the tiresome messages we’ve been receiving from a community where we no longer belong. 

The hush readies us for a milestone school year, the final one for my firstborn. 

Mental chatter gives way to quiet contentment in a place that slows urgency and asks nothing of us but to simply enjoy. If “silence is an endangered species,” like acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton says, then this is its preserve. 

Every Friday this summer, I took the kids on a weekly outing to various locales, but my son requested this spacious, quiet farm again and again. Soon, he began to ask for field trips not just on Fridays, but whenever I could carve out a couple of hours during the week, always choosing peaceful farm visits over more intense activities. On weeks when I could turn his attention from the berry farm, we visited other calming places.

At a local creamery, we followed the dairy cows out to the rolling pasture, met the calves and compared their birthdates, pondered around the pond, and indulged in small-batch ice cream made on the farm.

We strolled through the pastoral scenes at our living history museum, enjoying the bygone beauty of heirloom gardens and heritage livestock.

At a park, we hiked with our puppy along a wooded creek, breathing in the earthy air and following his paw prints in mud.

One week when my son was eager to practice his driving, we made our way out to the country in search of a yak farm and a llama farm we’d heard about. These outings made us feel a world away, even though we were just a short drive from home.

We attempted a water park visit one week, but found the crowds over capacity and turned back to our simpler, more serene adventures. 

While I am enamored with peaceful places, I’m not claiming noise is inherently bad. Joyful, lively sounds like a birthday celebration, cross country meet, or a good concert can bring energy and connection. I married a drummer, after all. But our brains and spirits also need quieter environments to decompress. These places can feel almost medicinal, like the quiet itself is working on you, slowing your heart rate, deepening your breath, softening your muscles, and allowing your mind to rest and rejuvenate. This restorative tonic doesn’t come in a bottle but in the form of an immersive experience.

Just as we glean sweetness from the raspberry bushes to take home, we glean peace from these hushed places and carry it back to sustain us in the demands of everyday life. I borrow a sense of order from the rows of crops, a sense of pace from watching workers slowly tend fields or gardens, and a sense of abundance as we pick from thriving bushes or walk a path next to green pastures.

We all need breaks from the high volume of human-made noise. In the quieter soundscape of the countryside, blessed by the gentleness of a flowing creek or the soft bellowing of cows as they graze, the verdant spaces of our lives renew our minds, offering spiritual clarity where we can discern God’s voice from all the others. This voice says to our weariness and worries: Meet me in lush fields. Be with me beside quiet waters.

With these immersive, restorative experiences in mind, I’ve designed my brand new Substack, Verdant, to be a similar refuge. In my vocational ministry as a spiritual director, I offer a peaceful space where people can show up just as they are to savor joy, process grief, brave difficult situations, find discernment, and foster creativity, all while rooted in a tangible experience of God's love and affection. Verdant, is an extension of this ministry, offering moments of shalom for you to take into everyday life.

I’ve designed Verdant to feel like a blend of literary magazine, arts festival, field guide, and spiritual retreat, a space where you can recover, grow, and find creative flow.

Here, you’ll find spiritual formation resources, creative prompts, original creations, and life-giving epiphanies. Cultivating resilience and joy, we’ll dip into nature, stories and poetry, music, art, Scripture, spiritual practices, and personal testimonies of the goodness of knowing God on earth.

As you settle yourself into this space, I think you’ll find a nurturing habitat for your soul, a peaceful respite from the pressure of your days, and shared strength for growing through the realities in your life and faith.

We’re one month into the school year, and all the classes, activities, and responsibilities have picked up their pace. Just this morning, while I was putting the finishing touches on this post, my son came home during his senior release block and asked if I could take an hour or so out of my work day to visit the farm with him. I could hear that school-year weariness in his voice. But he knew he could pull himself up from his moodiness by revisiting that peaceful space. How could I refuse?

“Did you know I’m writing about this very thing right now?” I asked him as I grabbed the dog’s leash. We made our way to the farm again, this time not for raspberries but to visit the aging sunflower rows. We bought a Cheerwine from the farm store and walked over to the fields to sit in the shade. There, I read this piece to him and it hit me that those summer visits weren’t just fun field trips to savor time with my kids, they had become a rhythm, an intentional practice of borrowing peace when life grows too noisy. 

Where do you go when you need to borrow peace? Even if you can’t get away in the middle of a school or work day, you can recall the memory of places where you have palpably felt the shalom of God. You can take your mind back to the aromas, textures, colors, and sounds. We all need to visit and revisit these scenes, physically and mentally, to give ourselves a chance to breathe, reset, and receive a peace that lingers and goes home with us.

My hope is that Verdant becomes one of these places for you, too—a retreat where you can encounter the beauty of creation (and cultivation), find the grounding you need to feel like your authentic self, and come back to engage your life with resilience and joy.

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