The Sounds of Silence
Escape. My house teems with evidence of attempts to escape from periodic attacks of panic, boredom and untidiness. There are multiple tapes and CD’s of waves lapping at anonymous beaches, which were supposed to ease me to sleep on those nights when it won’t come - and to calm me when I get a little frantic. Bags and sacks and boxes of yarns and fleeces mark an impulse to shake off the lazy me and turn myself into a Fascinating Woman of Artistic Vision. There are remnants of many different diets, booklets, cans of supplements, bottles of pills and supplements, etc. which testify to my abandoned attempts to drop weight or to become a healthier person. There was even a bottle of L’Oreal in case I decided to become someone else by changing the color of my hair. When I’m bored or frustrated by the lack of my body’s ability to rise to the challenges I see around me every day, or disgusted by the woman in the mirror, it’s easy to opt for the quick fix or the impulsive gesture. Rather than confront an unpleasant situation, I’ll start a new book. Rather than wrestle with my relationship with God, I’ll go shopping. More yarn is always good, and it’s so distracting. And the culture we live in is more than happy to accommodate my compulsion to avoid looking inside myself.
At times, the idea of being alone with my thoughts is about as attractive as treading water in a tank full of hungry sharks. Thought I travel often, I am never without a book or a bit of handwork - something to keep me distracted. Do I really want to hear God’s voice? Sure - as long as the stereo is on and there are folks around for company. God may very well speak in the midst of such circumstances, but am I listening?
I read recently about a monastery in the mountains of Colorado. Those seeking spiritual renewal make the trek to this remote place and stay for a week or more, in Spartan huts, without TV or radio. Seeking to supplant the noise of the world with a silence that listens only for the voice of God, they soak themselves in the Word of God and wait on heavenly insight. It sounds so beautifully ascetic. The mountains, the wind in the trees, all that nature. Unfortunately, something in my jittery self is ill at ease with all that unstructured time without the pacifier of civilization. My brain wants to make a plan, color it and hang curtains. I rush in with words to fill the awkward gaps in conversations. God, I want to listen, but I can’t stand the silence!
I don’t know if a forced silent retreat is what it takes to get us “noise junkies” in touch with God’s voice. It might do to ask ourselves what it is about silence that scares us so much.
Maybe it’s the intrusive voice of a critical parent. Or an image of a personal failure for which we can’t seem to forgive ourselves. Maybe it’s the ghost of a loss, which we have yet to mourn. We sense those images, those voices rumbling ominously in the distance, just beyond our wall of noise. And it takes all the emotional energy we have to hold them there. Sadly, until we allow the natural process of grief to invade our emotional wounds, neither will we experience the soothing hands of the Great Physician. His voice will remain garbled and indistinct - muffled beneath all those layers of noise.
In the Bible, we read about the prophet Elijah,
“The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
(1 Kings 19:11-13)
And we see that the voice of God is still and small, but always there.
At this point in my life I have separated myself from the usually present noise in the background. In fact, I cannot stand what I call noise pollution. But this is only the first step in listening to God. After removing our need for noise to mask the uncertainties, then comes the hard part. I have to learn to shut out my mind and it’s need to constantly make plans, lists, decisions, what to have for dinner when we have guests next week, what to wear to church, what do I need from the grocery store, how shall I handle the difficulty in being around my dear friend and her obnoxious child without alienating her, and on and on it goes. When God says ‘be still’ he means both inside and outside, and he means for us to empty our minds of the daily interrupters and make ourselves ready to listen to Him when He speaks to us. And if we are really quiet, and really listen, we really will hear Him. It may take strong medicine to wean you and me from the noisemakers in our lives. But when it finally happens, I suspect we will hear the same gentle voice Elijah heard on that day after the wind had passed and the earth had settled. And what might we expect him to say? Perhaps he will tell us to forget about changing our hair and taking up all those hobbies which clutter up our lives. He might urge us to stop “looking for love in all the wrong places”. Unplug the TV and the stereo. Turn off the ball game. Stop running away from the silence. Make your mind open to His voice. Because in the silence rests our hope. In the silence, a friend is waiting.
In Psalm 46:10 we find the words, “Be still and know that I am God.”
Let us practice being still.
Credit Note: a great deal of this material came from the book: Playing the Tuba at Midnight by Roberta Rand
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
It's been a very, very long time
since I posted. I keep waiting for wonderful things to happen, of which I will be 'happy to report to you. They aren't here. It has been a tough summer and fall. We had many subsequent days at 110 degrees. This is just too darned hot. We
are runnning around 99 about now, and are told not to expect cold weather till the first of the year.
I am turning 80 on the 6th of October. DH is now 86 and our children are giving us an "octogeniarian" birthday party. I can hardly wait. We have many friends in church and I have womens groups which include education, knitting for ICU babies and knitting for prayer shawls, not to mention the kknitting for children and grands and greats.
We saw the high school homecoming last week (we lost) and saw granddaughter Mally cheer and march with the band. Next we will go to one of the games each to see Saxon and Spencer play. HOnestly, football scares me a bit for this age child - but then they didn't ask me.
We are eating out the freezer so I can thaw it, and it's full of multi goodies.
I have back surgery scheduled for 13 of October, and will have to wear a brace for a while afterwards. When this is all well, I will probably have to have this last knee replaced. This is all of me except for the right shoulder, and since I don't have to walk on it, I may just let it go.
Blessings to all of you===============
are runnning around 99 about now, and are told not to expect cold weather till the first of the year.
I am turning 80 on the 6th of October. DH is now 86 and our children are giving us an "octogeniarian" birthday party. I can hardly wait. We have many friends in church and I have womens groups which include education, knitting for ICU babies and knitting for prayer shawls, not to mention the kknitting for children and grands and greats.
We saw the high school homecoming last week (we lost) and saw granddaughter Mally cheer and march with the band. Next we will go to one of the games each to see Saxon and Spencer play. HOnestly, football scares me a bit for this age child - but then they didn't ask me.
We are eating out the freezer so I can thaw it, and it's full of multi goodies.
I have back surgery scheduled for 13 of October, and will have to wear a brace for a while afterwards. When this is all well, I will probably have to have this last knee replaced. This is all of me except for the right shoulder, and since I don't have to walk on it, I may just let it go.
Blessings to all of you===============
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
ARSiddons
As promised, I am offering selections from books I love. This is aAne Rivers Sidons only non-fiction book. I will be offering more of her work later on....Let me know if this lights up your life -I hope if will.
John Chancellor Makes Me Cry by Anne Rivers Siddons
Page 21:”Outside the kitchen, the ice shawled down”
When I first read the word ‘shawled’, my first reaction was “You cannot do that!. You can't take a noun and turn it into a verb! You just can’t!” The long time teacher in me was roaring out!. Then I realized that, of course she could. She had, after all, just done it!. And I can’t deny that it’s a lovely word, even if it does break rules. Shawls are important to me. I make shawls. When I first began weaving them, I was using the beater so firmly that the cloth almost stood up by itself when I took it off the loom. I had to learn not to beat so hard. I had always done everything full tilt, so it was a hard lesson. But who wants a shawl that won’t shawl? See, I can do it, too, ARS.
January 2003 1
# Books Worth Rereading (Excerpts), and things to think about some more:
tilt, so it was a hard lesson. But who wants a shawl that won’t shawl? See, I can do it, too, ARS.
Page 245: “The thin scrim of blue that hangs over the hills doesn’t obscure but it colors. Farther north, into North Carolina, where they grow wild and fierce, stretching toward the two mile-high mark, these mountains are called the Great Smokies, because of that shawling gauze.”
Page 246:”the wildflower color of the mountain hardwoods that is so glorious in early October had long since bled away; we were left with the tawny shawls of kudzu and the black skeletons of hardwoods, with the black-green of the evergreens like an animal’s undercoat.”
More shawling!. And scrim is a lovely word, too.
Page : “In the summers, it is the white of peeling board cottages on stilts along the eroding beach, the dust-pink of tabby foundations, the pearly ecru of crushed oyster-shell driveways, the spindrift gray of Spanish moss, the black-green and the tomato-red of window shrouding oleanders, the opalescent wheat of the lion-colored, wind-surfed marshes, the dirty tan of the sand, the foaming hazel of the sea.”
(Ten color words in one sentence!. I love it. I also admit that is an quite a run-on sentence. But she can do this when she pleases, because I can see every one of these things. I wonder if it’s because I grew up in the same part of the South she did, and we have seen and experienced the same things? Probably. I lived at the beach a large part of my life, and yep, it’s just like she says it is. Sometimes, I take pictures of places where the colors just assault my eyes and senses!. I am hoping to translate this bombardment to photo paper until I can get to the dye pot and start trying to copy the colors to put on the loom in someway. There has to be a way. My head isn’t big enough to hold all these colors in one place at one time. I need a tactile reminder of the beauty I have seen. The colors are too magnificent to be forgotten.
And speaking of color, I once took a natural dyeing class from a very good instructor. I was overheard to grouse because my group assignment was to make variations of a brown/dun/grey, etc. and I thought the color was ugly. My instructor said “there is not such thing as an ugly color It all depends on where you put it. All of it is essential.” She was right. She also taught me that everything I made needed a ‘hit of light’ in it to make it come alive. Right again. How lucky I am to know so many astute people. How lucky I am that I actually listened to some of them. Mj)
____________________________________________________________________
John Chancellor Makes Me Cry by Anne Rivers Siddons
Page 21:”Outside the kitchen, the ice shawled down”
When I first read the word ‘shawled’, my first reaction was “You cannot do that!. You can't take a noun and turn it into a verb! You just can’t!” The long time teacher in me was roaring out!. Then I realized that, of course she could. She had, after all, just done it!. And I can’t deny that it’s a lovely word, even if it does break rules. Shawls are important to me. I make shawls. When I first began weaving them, I was using the beater so firmly that the cloth almost stood up by itself when I took it off the loom. I had to learn not to beat so hard. I had always done everything full tilt, so it was a hard lesson. But who wants a shawl that won’t shawl? See, I can do it, too, ARS.
January 2003 1
# Books Worth Rereading (Excerpts), and things to think about some more:
tilt, so it was a hard lesson. But who wants a shawl that won’t shawl? See, I can do it, too, ARS.
Page 245: “The thin scrim of blue that hangs over the hills doesn’t obscure but it colors. Farther north, into North Carolina, where they grow wild and fierce, stretching toward the two mile-high mark, these mountains are called the Great Smokies, because of that shawling gauze.”
Page 246:”the wildflower color of the mountain hardwoods that is so glorious in early October had long since bled away; we were left with the tawny shawls of kudzu and the black skeletons of hardwoods, with the black-green of the evergreens like an animal’s undercoat.”
More shawling!. And scrim is a lovely word, too.
Page : “In the summers, it is the white of peeling board cottages on stilts along the eroding beach, the dust-pink of tabby foundations, the pearly ecru of crushed oyster-shell driveways, the spindrift gray of Spanish moss, the black-green and the tomato-red of window shrouding oleanders, the opalescent wheat of the lion-colored, wind-surfed marshes, the dirty tan of the sand, the foaming hazel of the sea.”
(Ten color words in one sentence!. I love it. I also admit that is an quite a run-on sentence. But she can do this when she pleases, because I can see every one of these things. I wonder if it’s because I grew up in the same part of the South she did, and we have seen and experienced the same things? Probably. I lived at the beach a large part of my life, and yep, it’s just like she says it is. Sometimes, I take pictures of places where the colors just assault my eyes and senses!. I am hoping to translate this bombardment to photo paper until I can get to the dye pot and start trying to copy the colors to put on the loom in someway. There has to be a way. My head isn’t big enough to hold all these colors in one place at one time. I need a tactile reminder of the beauty I have seen. The colors are too magnificent to be forgotten.
And speaking of color, I once took a natural dyeing class from a very good instructor. I was overheard to grouse because my group assignment was to make variations of a brown/dun/grey, etc. and I thought the color was ugly. My instructor said “there is not such thing as an ugly color It all depends on where you put it. All of it is essential.” She was right. She also taught me that everything I made needed a ‘hit of light’ in it to make it come alive. Right again. How lucky I am to know so many astute people. How lucky I am that I actually listened to some of them. Mj)
____________________________________________________________________
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
How I feel about now.......
Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself
and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire
in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And to know that if I do this,
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem lost in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen
(Thomas Merton)
I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself
and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire
in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And to know that if I do this,
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem lost in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen
(Thomas Merton)
Monday, August 15, 2011
It last rained in April.....
and now, finally, two days of rain this week. It was almost surreal There was another fire at the ranch, but for a while, things are wet. The good thing is that the parched pastures will start to green up and the poor critters can have something besides hay.
Saw the neurologist this past week. He is so against surgery on backs that I was stunnned when he said we needed to do a laminectomy. I asked why, since he once told me never to let anyone near my back with a knife. He says, that does not apply unless you are out of anything else to try, and I seem to be there. So we are waiting for clearance from the other neurologist, the caridologist and the GP.
Saw the neurologist this past week. He is so against surgery on backs that I was stunnned when he said we needed to do a laminectomy. I asked why, since he once told me never to let anyone near my back with a knife. He says, that does not apply unless you are out of anything else to try, and I seem to be there. So we are waiting for clearance from the other neurologist, the caridologist and the GP.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Once again, we have to wait for the quotes -
Oh well, they will always be there.
We had a good trip to Florida and I am again renewed. I did, however, go splat on the floor the first day we were there. I have had lectures about picking up my feet, and I keep trying. Happily, George, Nancy and two grands were there to help me up and minister to my various hurts - some worse than others. We had a glorious time fishing but the fish are just not here anymore. I have two theories for this. One is the climate change. Two years ago I began seeing sea creatures I have never seen before on our beaches, and when investigating I find that they are from more southern waters, heading away from the warming of the waters of the earth. The same might be said of the fish, though I think the main culprit here is the leaky oil well in our just immediate past. With one exception we caught sharks and channel catfish. Yuk. We have some other ideas about trying different places and techniques when next year comes. Saxon (elder grandchild of the Scotts) stayed home with his dad and together they tore down an old building on the place and plan to use the lumber to build a new room in the small apartment they have on the mesa. He is very proud of himself. This new action comes as a result of his turning 15, and next year will apply to Mally also. She is certainly capable of putting in a full day's work when her time comes. We will have Spencer at the beach for a couple more years.
George and I have been asked to go to a marriage seminar as mentors of sorts. I think we will go. We will soon reach our 50 year marriage mark, and all the people who predicted doom for us will have egg on their faces. It just takes work and patience and humor and love and there you have it.
Please pray for daughter Mary Beth and her husband Ken as he battles cancer It's a hard fight but they go valiantly on and will finish the course. We need a complete healing, here, just as we need your prayers for this to happen. Thank you in advance.
God has given me a curriculum for the jr. and sr. high students ar church and I was up to do it myself. Our perceptive minister, realizing that I am not in physical shape to do this alone, has worked out a roster of couples, feeling that the presence of boh men and women is important here. I will write the material I have been given and off we go! Such an adventure this will be. I am excited about it and very happy not to have the whole thing on my shoulders- particularly since I need a new left knee and will do this asap. This leaves only the right shoulder and I will be totally bionic. My spine is deteriorating with L4 and L5 having disappeared. Not sure what happens next, but I know I'll find out. There are days when I wish I didn't have to.
Blessings to all of you, those I know and those I don't. MJ
We had a good trip to Florida and I am again renewed. I did, however, go splat on the floor the first day we were there. I have had lectures about picking up my feet, and I keep trying. Happily, George, Nancy and two grands were there to help me up and minister to my various hurts - some worse than others. We had a glorious time fishing but the fish are just not here anymore. I have two theories for this. One is the climate change. Two years ago I began seeing sea creatures I have never seen before on our beaches, and when investigating I find that they are from more southern waters, heading away from the warming of the waters of the earth. The same might be said of the fish, though I think the main culprit here is the leaky oil well in our just immediate past. With one exception we caught sharks and channel catfish. Yuk. We have some other ideas about trying different places and techniques when next year comes. Saxon (elder grandchild of the Scotts) stayed home with his dad and together they tore down an old building on the place and plan to use the lumber to build a new room in the small apartment they have on the mesa. He is very proud of himself. This new action comes as a result of his turning 15, and next year will apply to Mally also. She is certainly capable of putting in a full day's work when her time comes. We will have Spencer at the beach for a couple more years.
George and I have been asked to go to a marriage seminar as mentors of sorts. I think we will go. We will soon reach our 50 year marriage mark, and all the people who predicted doom for us will have egg on their faces. It just takes work and patience and humor and love and there you have it.
Please pray for daughter Mary Beth and her husband Ken as he battles cancer It's a hard fight but they go valiantly on and will finish the course. We need a complete healing, here, just as we need your prayers for this to happen. Thank you in advance.
God has given me a curriculum for the jr. and sr. high students ar church and I was up to do it myself. Our perceptive minister, realizing that I am not in physical shape to do this alone, has worked out a roster of couples, feeling that the presence of boh men and women is important here. I will write the material I have been given and off we go! Such an adventure this will be. I am excited about it and very happy not to have the whole thing on my shoulders- particularly since I need a new left knee and will do this asap. This leaves only the right shoulder and I will be totally bionic. My spine is deteriorating with L4 and L5 having disappeared. Not sure what happens next, but I know I'll find out. There are days when I wish I didn't have to.
Blessings to all of you, those I know and those I don't. MJ
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