Loving A Hidden God

QUIET LISTENING

Humans find it hard to taste the sweetness of eternity because they cannot keep their thoughts from rushing vainly back and forth between what has been and what is yet to come. If only someone could make their minds stay still for a little while, so that for a moment they might be enraptured by the splendor of the eternity that is always still. Who indeed can grasp the hearts of humans so that they might stop rushing about and at long last truly SEE? Can any words of mine accomplish such a grand task?

Confessions, 11.11

The answer to Augustine's question is, of course: "No!" There are no words that can make the human mind stand still. God is only heard in peaceful silence but to achieve such quiet stillness seems almost impossible for you and me. We are swept along by the stream of time. Day in and day out we are on the move, tossed here and there by the currents of our lives, now reaching out to hang onto a this or a that so that we might be secure, always failing because anything we seek to grasp is moving as fast as we.

Far from special "words" soothing the discordant disruption of our days, there seem to be too many words in our lives. We seem to be always surrounded by NOISE, suffocated by shouting voices screaming endlessly about what God is like, what God hates, who is evil and who is good, who is damned and who is saved, quoting scripture passages to prove a point, ignoring the context, emphasizing this word or that, ignoring the fact that the scripture taken together is "THE WORD" and that shouting this phrase or that phrase which suits one's present purpose makes it impossible for anyone to hear the simple message of the Lord, writers never shutting up, running on forever and ever ....... like this sentence.

Deafened by the babel outside, we struggle to escape inside ourselves, to withdraw into solitude of "self" where we have at least a chance to hear God telling us how to find the blessed life here and hereafter, hearing the word of God telling us such things as:

Don't hate anyone.

Don't waste yourself on trivialities.

Never despair of reaching heaven.

Never be afraid to say "I'm sorry".

On most days it is hard to hear God's whispers because we are deafened by the swirling life around us, the passing events and the shouting people that envelop us. We have the same problem that Pilate had. When Jesus stood in the public square face to face with Pilate, Pilate could not hear him because of the shouting crowd. It was only when he took Jesus inside, into his own private house, that the Roman was able to truly hear Jesus telling him, "Indeed, I AM a king!"

Perhaps Jesus would never have been crucified if Pilate had kept talking to him in the silence of his own private quarters. It is hard to kill God when you are looking into his eyes in a quiet room, but outside it was easy for the voice of God to be drowned out by the frenzy of the crowd. Pilate was overcome with the noise and the needs of his external world. He was swept away by the screams of the crowds, shouting fallacies often repeated in human history:

This prophet is always right but that prophet is always wrong!

If you do not join our group, you are certainly lost!

If you do join our group, you are certainly saved!

Such declarations can be very persuasive when you are confused by the whirling world around you. Searching for salvation amidst the babel that deafens us, we sometimes will join any new group that promises security. Or sometimes we will simply give up trying to find answers and give in to what Augustine called the "concupiscence of the eyes," a vain curiosity about inconsequential things. (Sermon 313a, 3) We then spend all our time peering into the lives of everyone else (especially those odd enough to be "talk-show" celebrities) and have no time left for reflection on our own destiny, our own weakness and strength. We demonstrate the truth of Augustine's observation:

We humans are truly hopeless creatures. The less we concentrate on our own faults, the more interested we become in the faults of others. We love to criticize others and spend little or no time correcting ourselves.

Sermon 19, 2-3

It is tragic when this happens. Perhaps television lives are more interesting than ours, but they are not ours. Our life may be more humble and more boring than the lives of others but at least it is our life, and it is this life that we must deal with because it is in this vessel that we shall eventually plunge over the Great Falls of death. Indeed, this little life of ours is the only place where Jesus can be with us to help us get beyond our sometimes days of darkness.

Living a life constantly outside of ourselves may be more interesting but it also can be a burden. Augustine once told a friend that he thought it easier to bear the difficult life and storms of the wilderness than the things humans must suffer or fear in the "busyness" of the world. (Letter 95, 4). To another he wrote:

I simply cannot taste and enjoy the truly good things of eternity as long as I have no relief from the care and work of today. Believe me, one must have many withdrawals of oneself from the turmoil of passing events before it is possible to say: "I fear nothing!"

Letter 10, 2.

What he is saying is that all of us must find our own quiet hermitage to listen to God's voice and the only place where this exists in this noisy world is within our own self. Only in this hidden, quiet place can we find a personal solitude hidden from everyone else. Outside, the world is driven hither and yon by storms and troubles. It is only inside that we can reflect on the meaning of our life and death, ponder God and ourselves, examine our loves and hates. It is only there that we can find peaceful rest and in that quiet rest rediscover hope. It is a secret place where only we and God dwell, a place where God can reveal to us what we have hidden even from ourselves, a place where we can experience the only valuable praise, the praise that we and every human being has from God. (Sermon 47, 14.23)

It is hard for any human being to achieve this quiet. The uproar of the world keeps calling us from our inner sanctuary, demanding that we look back to this world rather than look forward to the world to come (Sermon 105, 5.7) The more we become attached to the noisy world outside, the more we may come to fear withdrawing to the silence within, frightened that it will become a prison from which we cannot escape. Only through a habit of quiet solitude can we come to see it for what it is, an Eden with no walls, a world of reverie where anything is possible, a safe place where for a while we can sit and watch the noisy world outside.

What Augustine said of his own life is true for every human being:

We truly are thirsting for a taste of everlasting peace but our thoughts are still twisted and turned in all directions by the ebb and flow of time. If only we could seize our spirits and make them stay still for a moment! Then perhaps we could glimpse the splendor of an eternity that is forever still.

Confessions, 11.11.

Augustine's prayer for relief from noise is indeed a fine prayer for any of us:

Speak here inside me Lord, because only you always tell me the truth. I shall leave all the noisy world outside and retire to my own little room deep inside my heart and there I will sing my love song to you.

Confessions, 12.16.

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