Reflections for 5/27/10

"Blaise Pascal said all human evil comes into the world because people can't sit still in a chair for thirty minutes! I hope that's an exaggeration. Maybe he's saying that running from silence is undoubtedly running from our souls, ourselves, and therefore, from God."(R. Rohr "Radical Grace" p. 200)

One of the many great moments in the Bible is Elijah hiding in the cave. He comes out when he hears the sound of sheer silence. All the other stuff, earthquakes, wind, and fire, did not signal God's presence. Only silence.

At our Lay Reader meeting this month, that passage came up, and we talked about sheer silence and how that is seemingly impossible to get. As we sat in the room, the hum of the lights and the nearby refrigerator kept a level of din going.

I do believe that most of us would be very afraid of sheer silence, whether we believed that is where God is to be encountered or not. Because of that fear, we do all that we can to have some level of noise happening.

Silence is an incredibly hard discipline. So is sitting still. We live in a world that even those who have not been diagnosed as having ADHD behave as if we do. A silent retreat is still something I would not choose for myself, but when forced to do it, have found it incredibly relaxing. I will also admit that I need to be isolated from other people to pull it off.

I'm not a quiet person generally. My secular music taste is loud. Even the church hymns that I love tend to be the more bombastic. My house is not quiet either.

So it may be that with all that chosen noise, periods of self-imposed silence may be incredibly important.

I don't know how long I could truly sit still without falling asleep. I don't know that I'm running from God, with all that din. But it is not outside the realm of possibility that in fact by avoiding silence, I may be avoiding and therefore missing something truly important that needs to be heard.

Blessings,
Ed