Silence and God

I remember the first time I was ever really aware of experiencing silence. I was skiing in the mountains near Vancouver and I suddenly could feel and hear an incredible stillness. There was no one else but me standing in the snow amid huge trees. Even at the time I remember thinking: 'I am hearing silence!'. I felt a wonderful sense of awe. When I look back now what I understand is that it wasn't simply the physical sound of silence I experienced but something much deeper, much more awesome - it was in some sense the silence of the presence of God. It was so powerful that to this day, I know I remain touched by it. It stirred me and awakened in me a longing which I couldn't then identify but I now realize was a longing for God.

So what I want to say first is that I believe that the silence many of us long for is, simply, God. It is not just that God is found in the silence but that God is the very silence itself; a kind of calling silence. 

The conclusion I then reach is that as we as a society get both increasingly distressed by all the noise around us and, at the same time, find ourselves filling our lives with yet more noise and more activity; this drowning out may be in order to muffle that calling silence. For we are in so many ways, hugely conflicted about God. On the one hand many of us want something more, something more meaningful than just the apparent day after day grind; on the other hand we can be afraid of surrendering to this calling God. We may be afraid of what might be asked or we may not be able to drown out the voices of scorn around us.

As Sister Wendy says in the quote in my last blog, God wants to love us...God wants to draw us ever closer to strengthen us and infuse God's peace. I know that it is hard, really hard, to believe that a God of love exists when our world seems so full of all sorts of very bad things and immense suffering. I guess I can only say that, in your work life for instance, you read up, you study, you learn all you can. Well, try that with God.  
 

Not a very 'mystical' photo but the snail does get to where it is going!

Besides reading and listening to God-lovers, as I have been trying to say this week and last, pray. You will find God in your busy life. You will find God in your relationships. You will find God in your ordinary day to day life. You will find God in your moments of silence. You will find God in your prayer. And the more we can pray the more we will see the beauty in life and in the other people in our lives.

A great lover of God said, Prayer is nothing more than friendly converse with one we know loves us. How's that for simplicity?