Yesterday, I heard an outstanding sermon. Coming from me, that says something.

As some people are coffee snobs or music snobs or clothing snobs, I am a sermon snob. I’m one of those people who feel that, although I go to Mass to participate in communal worship, I also go to be spiritually fed, and half of that feeding comes from the preaching. Add to that attitude the critical listening that comes from being a professional writer and more than 15 years as an active member of the Catholic press and you’ve got someone programed to “edit” from the pew. Additionally, I’ve been blessed through my work to have heard some of the best preachers in the country and everyone knows that once you’ve tasted the best of something, its really hard to accept less than that without noticing that, well, it’s less.

The problem with most preaching – and this is as true of Protestant ministers as it is of Catholic priests – is that most preachers are so love with the sound of their own voices and so convicted that their words needed no editing, that they go on long after the sermon’s natural ending point. People squirm in the pews, look at their watches, glance at the door, check the football scores on their cell phones — anything to escape the horrific feeling of being a pew prisoner during a too-long (or too-rambling) sermon. Still, the preachers go on. And on. And, all too frequently, on.

This practice ignores fundamental facts about attention span (between 7 and 10 minutes for listening, depending on the age and education of the listener and apparently shrinking every second due to linking, linking, linking) and the ability of remembering a point when it is surrounded by too much exposition.

Yesterday, however, the priest knew the end and stopped when it came, which, coincidentally, was less than seven minutes after he started. Then he did something brilliant: He sat down and stayed silent for about two minutes, letting people process what they just heard. The sermon was on the need for silence in a world of noise and “connection,” especially during Advent, the four-week liturgical season preceding the Christmas season (which, by Christian standards, is not the month after Thanksgiving but the weeks between Christmas Eve and Epiphany.) The priest used a recitation of a Liffey River full of words to demonstrate the noise blocking out the one Word that matters. His point was made without him ever having to say: You guys need to spend more time in silence so you can hear the still, small voice of God. (Best line about societal blabbering was something to this effect: I update my FaceBook status via Twitter using my Blackberry smart phone.)

So, if you’re the believing sort, you might consider the priest’s advice. If you need a jump start, here’s Beliefnet’s annual Advent cool stuff page – with their (yuck) new page design, you have to scroll halfway down to get to the calendar, but its a good tool if you want to enrich your celebration of the season. And on this page, also if you scroll down, is info on all the other December religious holidays of other faiths.

And a postscript about the power of words: This from the NYTimes about the newspaper winning their seven-year battle to get documents about the clergy sex abuse scandal released from the never-accommodating Cardinal Edward Egan, once the bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., where the abuse occurred. Note Egan’s words of (still!) denial and shape-shifting compared to those of Diarmuid Martin, the Archbishop of Dublin, when addressing the crime in his archdiocese. It is easy, IMHO, to see the one Word in Martin’s words … and the shameful absence of same in Egan’s.

St. Frances de Sales, the patron saint of journalists and writers, once said, “Half an hour’s meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.”

I’ve been thinking about statement almost obsessively over the past five days for two reasons: One, I read this article on the “radical idea” of people taking 24 hours of absolute solitude and, two, I got hurt exercising and have been confined against my will as my injury heals.

While every person’s road to happiness is different, there are some things that research shows increase happiness in general, and one of them is a little bit of silence. Not every day, necessarily, and not necessarily for a long time, but some silence sometime. Some of us – the ones already prone to overthinking everything – might actually be harmed by too much solitude, too much “think time.” These folks might be better aimed toward happiness by actively helping other people.

The most amazing group of teenagers I've ever worked with, at the end of our week of gutting two homes destroyed by Katrina so they could be reconstructed on the inside

I’m a middle-of-the-roader here: I need both active engagement and time alone, and I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, the need for the latter has increased greatly, something I could never have imagined when I was 20. The times I’ve felt happiest (except for the births of each of my kids) have been when I’ve actually DONE something to help someone out, like when I helped gut houses in New Orleans with a bunch of teenagers after Hurricane Katrina.

I need evidence of my work, to see that I’ve done something concrete to make the world a better place, in order to get the hit of happiness that keeps me going in this life. Writing a check to a charity just doesn’t do it, nor does sitting on a board of a charity that does good work I never touch. I’m a hands-on, get-it-done girl who doesn’t like to be told “No,” or “Let’s have a meeting” or “Perhaps we should pray about it.”

Exhausted after a days work gutting houses, sleeping on the floor of a parish rectory that still, a year after Katrina, had no hot water and sporadic electricity

That said, I’ve found that if I don’t have some reflection time – about 60 minutes/week – my hamster-wheel brain jumps from one idea to another with not a whole lot of direction. I need silence, pure and uninterrupted, to prioritize where my energy would best be spent in this world of need.

I think for most folks, distracted by texting, tweeting, Web surfing, IMing, Face Book and every other technological do-dad, a little silence could go a long way toward offering some perspective and peace.

And most importantly, that silence would give us time to think, as opposed to having our brains be constantly revved up by outside stimuli. Great ideas don’t just jump into one’s mind fully formed, all the nits worked out. Creativity – be it in the science lab or the art studio – is fed by the ability to daydream. And daydreaming can’t happen when one’s mind (or a section of one’s mind) is distracted by NOISE.

One of the many New Orleans homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina. This was one of the first things we saw coming into the city.

So, all you happiness seekers out there, some questions for today: Have you ever sought out absolute solitude (no outside stimulation at all, including books) as a means toward peacefulness, happiness or a more contented life? When was the last time you just laid on your back looking at clouds, or, at night, looking at the stars? How does silence – or the lack thereof – affected your overall well-being? Or, are you a person who needs action more than silence for happiness?