Silence

Silence

How do you respond to silence?  Do you think about getting the "silent treatment" when someone is angry with you?  Do you think about times of loneliness?  Do you remember glorious walks in the forest?  Do you remember times when you were left to relish in the calm after a house full of people go back to their homes?  Do you think of the silence in a church on a quiet Friday morning?

The prophet Habakkuk reminds us that God is, and that we can worship and connect with God through silence.  How hard is it for you to embrace silence?  Carving out time for silence can be hard in our busy, 24/7 world.  There seems to be background noise all around us.

Just last night, I was reading and the kids were in bed and I started to hear the most amazing sound emerging from the silence.  At first I thought it was a sound that went along with someone setting off fireworks - a high-pitched screech.  Or,  perhaps it was a pack of coyotes across the woods...

So, I went outside, and the noise stopped.  Later, I realized that the noise was bats flying nearby our outside light where a plethora of bugs were flying.  Bats feasting on bugs, emerging from the silence.  Amazing.

What gifts of silence are there for us?  Do we have ears to hear?  Do we shut up long enough to enjoy the silence of the Almighty?

The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him. Habakkuk 2:20

"I am learning to shut up more in the presence of God."   Archbishop Tutu

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

Be still before the Lord, Psalm 37

Psalm 37:1-7 Part I Noli aemulari

1	Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; * do not be jealous of those who do wrong.
2	For they shall soon wither like the grass, * and like the green grass fade away.
3	Put your trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and feed on its riches.
4	Take delight in the Lord, * and he shall give you your heart's desire.
5	Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him, * and he will bring it to pass.
6	He will make your righteousness as clear as the light* and your just dealing as the noonday.
7	Be still before the Lord * and wait patiently for him.

Arrrrg!  Again with the patience!  Clearly, these psalms keep coming back and smacking me on the head wiht the reminder that "being still" and "waiting patiently" is what we (I) must do more often.  After four weeks of reading Job in the Sunday lectionary and now these reminders about patience and waiting and silence, I suppose I need to listen.


But, it is hard to be patient, as I wrote last week. It is hard for me to be patient.  The world (and my heart and mind) tell me that I must act if something is going to happen, and then I also fall into the trap of thinking that things need to happen on my own timetable.


Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.  Hmmmm.  


And, really, this is a gift, the gift of waiting, of being still, of being silent.  Many of us can carve out some stillness, some waiting, and some silence in our days.  Perhaps I could shut off the car radio.  Perhaps I could stop on the way to work for 5 minutes and enjoy the view.  Perhaps I could take more time to sit and cultivate patience through meditation and prayer.  The "off" button is sometimes hard to find, but it is there for each of us, even in small moments.   And once we get used to pushing the "off" button, we may find that we experience God more fully alive in our lives.


~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.

~Habakkuk 2:20

Leave some gaps

This is just the kind of "nonsense" that I needed to read...!

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling in the silences of life with sound, productive by turning all life’s leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have not silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have not rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

Thomas Merton, Through the Year With Thomas Merton

...simple stillness...under the Word of God

By Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Silence is the simple stillness of the individual under the Word of God. We are silent before hearing the Word because our thoughts are already directed to the Word, as a child is quiet when he enters his father’s room. We are silent after hearing the Word because the Word is still speaking and dwelling within us. We are silent at the beginning of the day because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep because the last word also belongs to God….

Silence is nothing else but waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing. But everybody knows that this is something that needs to be practiced and learned, in these days when talkativeness prevails. Real silence, real stillness, really holding one’s tongue comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual stillness.

Source: Life Together