Silence

For some time now I have noticed that words cannot fully relieve me of the reality that I am fundamentally alone. This is a difficult confession for a word smith who too often dawdles in the illusion that everything can be named or explained. My career as a preacher and writer is one tall paper tower that reaches up into the heavens. And yet, all that seems to echo down from that pulp is babble.
Words cannot save us. For example, have you ever had the experience of trying to explain to someone a failed marriage? You can talk with them for hours in sublime confidence. They will ask many questions, turning every galling stone, challenging your glosses, and affirming your intentions. But when it is all said and done they still do not understand. You can never fully reveal the pain of betrayal and the sheering agony of defeated dreams. You are still alone.
People frequently ask how long it takes to write a sermon. The tired response is ten to fifteen hours. But the real answer is a lifetime. And I still do not understand the writing of it. I used to believe that it was a matter of reading, researching, outlining, illustrating, and writing with the appropriate rules of grammar. All of those are necessary but they do not account for the hours of fulminating and pacing. Some call it the creative process. Is that what wakes me up at night and insists I take dictation till three in the morning? Is this the sermonic muse that throws open the shower curtain, pushes my wife out of bed, calls the ball game in the fourth inning, and stops my car on the Interstate? I have no words for this experience. I simply obey its commands, having learned long ago that I have less tolerance for its insistent whining for expression, even if the words never experience print.
There are many experiences that words cannot articulate. The more I try to explain some things to people the more we both wander from the truth. History becomes fiction, no matter how factually I am able to recount events. People hear what they want to and my voice has its own filters. I have also noticed that the questions some people bring the story can never answer. The news, the stories, the lore, the poems, the songs, and the metaphors often hide the shadows of distortion.
Some things are best left unsaid when silence is closer to the truth and solitude is the best audience.
I am reminded of Abbot Agatho who kept a stone in his mouth for three years to discipline himself to silence.

The Voice of God

In the Morning Prayer these words are offered: "We will know Your power and presence this day, if we will but listen for Your Voice."
For most of us that assumes a spoken word. We rather imagine that God will speak to us in American Standard English, offering direction, counsel, rebuke, advice, and hope. Or we expect that when the Bible is read, a prayer rendered, a hymn sung, and a sermon offered we would hear the voice of God. That is all well and good and God speaks to us in such a fashion.
But I do not think the voice of the Sacred is limited to the common vernacular. I do not know why we are constantly trying to put restraints on the Holy. Dare I say it, a muzzle? I experience the voice of the Divine in many fluid and various ways.
Just the other day I was feeding the animals in the morning. I could not hear a human sound or voice. There was not a whisper of automobiles, trains, trucks, tractors, or airplanes. All I could hear was the sound of the wind blowing through the cottonwood and mulberry trees. Horses were chomping in their feed. Rosie the duck was splashing in her wading pool. I dare say, such is the voice of God.
Of course, I hear the Sacred in the choral music of our church; in the organ peeling the wedding march, and in the passionate songs of love and protest. The metered words of poets touch a hallowed tone. I think especially of Mary Oliver and R.S. Thomas. I take great comfort in the giggling of little children, a mother's cooing over her baby, and the gentle talk of older women sewing blankets for impoverished children in Nicaragua.
The problem is not that the voice of God is sparing or muted. The problem is that we do not listen for it. We are paying too much attention to the arguments in our own head, the drone of political commentary, and the nonsense that race across airwaves and cable cords.
If we would but listen!
Today I am thinking of St. Frideswide, abbess of a medieval priory in Oxford, England. The staff she carries indicates the shepherding role of her nuns, with an ox at her feet. She is the patron saint of Oxford University.