Making Room for Silence

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire, a sound of sheer silence.  

– 1 Kings 19: 11-12

How do we make room for silence? I’m asking for a friend. A friend who is the parent of two teenagers, husband to a wife, and has been a priest for (checks ordination certificate)… nearly seventeen years. It’s me. I’m asking for myself. How do I make room for silence?

Silence is the theme for The Well this week. Lent feels like a call to simplicity and to rest in God. But those are things I aspire to. I want simplicity in the midst of the complex world. I crave rest. I want peace and quiet. I do not want silence.

Silence is the gap between asking a question and getting an answer. Silence is the uncertainty of what will happen next. Silence is the three dots in the little gray bubble when you’re texting with someone who matters to you.

We enter a silence as one version of ourselves and we exit the other side as something new. We ask someone the question “Will you?” and whatever the answer, we are different. Making room for silence means making room for both the person we are when we ask the question and the person we will be after getting the answer.

We all want the new life of Easter. We’ve all been around long enough to see things fall apart in our lives, in the world. We have seen death, we long for resurrection. Lent is the silence between one thing and the next, between dying and resurrection. Lent is this season of silence, the time to practice for every moment of silence between one thing and the next.

How do I make room for silence? How do you? The first thing we have to do is take a risk. We have to ask a question, one to which we do not know the answer, one to which we cannot pretend to know the answer.

Quiet is peaceful and relaxing: the way your heart sits still, listening to the ocean waves or the rushing of a creek. Silence is something else entirely. I pray for you the blessing of peace, God’s peace that passes all understanding. These remaining weeks of Lent, I pray God’s peace that passes beyond the quiet and into every silence of your life.

_______

Join us on Wednesday evenings during Lent, all are invited for a special Lenten worship experience at 6 pm in the Church which includes music, prayers for healing, and time for contemplation and reflection.