Learning to Wait

Psalm46:10 "Be still (cease striving) and know that I am God..."

There is a direct relationship between waiting in stillness and knowing God. When we cease our striving and our religious activity long enough to rest quietly in the stillness, we find that He is there. Jeremiah 29:13 says, "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." This seeking and searching has been mistaken for activity and in a society drunk with accomplishing more in less time so that we can get even more done, most of us do not have the vaguest understanding of what this means.

The activity associated with searching and striving is for those who are unwilling to exist in the quiet places of the soul where God accomplishes great works that are largely unseen. He tells us to be still and in that stillness, that waiting....there He is found. And that is the great secret of seeking. Waiting is not passive and fruitless, a waste of precious time. It is an intentional repositioning of ourselves at His feet, knowing that transformation will surely come. Waiting in stillness is the divine mandate that most of us miss and so He must orchestrate our circumstances in such a way that we are forced into periods of waiting. But when we embrace this waiting and this stillness we find places in our own souls that we did not know existed and it is there that we see the reflection of His face, the branding of His image. And that is where we are changed and transformed. Sue Monk Kidd defines this paradox as "achieving our deepest progress standing still."

There are divine pockets of waiting throughout life that hold deep treasures and it is only the ones who are willing to embrace the stillness and to wait on Him that discover that this treasure is but more of Him. For years I wrestled with this, acquiescing on the outside but resisting and resenting within. It has only been recently that I have wrapped my arms around this thing called waiting so that I might discover the depths of truly knowing Him. Give yourself permission to pull away, to cease so much activity, to engage in quiet waiting. The "knowing" is worth all the "waiting".

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The Glory of Being Alone

"Silence is the way to make solitude a reality"
~Henry Nouwen

When I was a girl, I spent many hours with my grandmother on her front porch watching the rain. Sometimes we would talk but more often than not words were unimportant and instead we would both get lost in the beautiful conversation between the wind and the raindrops. I did not understand in those days how she was schooling me in the art of solitude. All of the mornings I would find her in her breakfast room, sipping coffee and listening to the serenade of the blue jays and cardinals outside of her opened back door, she was teaching me the importance of what Wordsworth called "a wise passiveness."

I have known people who find themselves anything but companionable and I feel so sad for them as I have nearly always enjoyed my own company. This is not because I am anything special, but rather that I was taught at an early age to appreciate, even relish silence and solitude and to seek it out regularly as one might seek time with a dear friend. Sadly, this is a lost art in our current time and with an ever increasing number of distractions and ways to connect with others, this generation has forgotten how to connect with self, which ironically leaves us with much less to offer all the other people with whom we work so hard to connect.

Paul Tillich said that "Language has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone, and the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone." I long for my own children to know the glory of being alone for it is in that place where we become acquainted with our true selves and can then see the transformation from who we are to who we can become. God's transforming grace can meet us in the contemplative silence with an overwhelming clarity that is unknown in the hustle and bustle of busy living and it is a meeting of unparalleled importance. It is what elevates the leader from good to great, the Christian from shallow to deep and the person who is alone from pain to glory.

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Lend Me Your Ear

I was out on a date this past weekend with my husband. We went to Outback Steakhouse for two reasons: my husband's love affair with all things beefy, and we had a gift card. You just can't argue with free. As we were sitting there waiting on our food to come, I was thinking about all of the sounds that were bombarding my ears. Televisions were playing ESPN, music was playing loudly, people were talking and laughing, and cell phones were ringing. And then I thought about what mealtime must have looked like one hundred years ago. The clink of silverware on china, polite conversation....hmmmm.....that's it. What a noisy, busy, overstimulating world we live in.

A favorite author of mine, Sue Monk Kidd, has invested considerable amounts of time reading contemplative literature and making regular monastic retreats. She speaks about the "monk" who lives within herself who "craves the depths of solitude and silence". I get that. My soul cries out for solitude and introspection and time for observation of all things commonplace and ordinary that, when carefully inspected, reveal the glory and magnificence of a creative God. However we live in a point in time that is punctuated by potentially unending, mind-numbing stimuli. Television, internet, ipods, cell phones, music piped in to every store and restaurant and now there are iphones that enable us to have all of these things in one handy, distracting little device. I find no fault with these wonderous technological advances, I just think that we have to work that much harder at practicing the discipline of solitude which is as essiential to the well-being of the soul as water is to the body. And so many people grab hold of these distractions as a way to avoid facing the emaciation of their hearts and souls. A steady stream of noise drowns out the cry within for something significant, something substantial, something.... missing.
Be sure you are making time to hear. You will find that there is a roar deep inside if you will just put the shell up to your ear.

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You Have the Right to Remain Silent...

I recently read where celebrated scientist and Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein was invited to a dinner party given in his honor by the president of Swarthmore College. When he was asked to give a speech, he stood and greeted the people and then said this: "Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry but I have nothing to say. In case I do have something to say, I'll come back." After six months Einstein contacted the president of the college and informed him that he now had something to say so another dinner was arranged and he gave a speech.

I was asked to speak at a conference recently and, when it got down to it, I had nothing to say so I quietly backed out and someone else filled my spot. I had never done that before....I really do take my speaking opportunities quite seriously. I once spoke to three hundred people with no notes, but I had something to say, something burning in my heart. This time it was different. And I could see no reason to waste the time of so many people when I had nothing to say.

I have often wondered what life would be like if people (and specifically me) only spoke when they had something to say. Ministers of the Gospel would do well to check with God and make sure there is something to say before speaking on His behalf . All of us would do well to slow down and think before opening our mouths. There is an old saying: "If you cannot improve the silence, do not speak."

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Will Somebody Please Turn Down the Noise?!

Have you ever noticed the level of noise pollution in many restaurants? Music blares from speakers all over the building while two or three televisions hanging throughout the restaurant are set to different stations, further contributing to the cacophony. (How in the world are we expected to watch the TV when Olivia Newton-John is singing Xanadu loudly over the sound system?). Mix all of that with the normal din of dozens of conversations and you are talking chaos. And it is like that in many public places.
Now, obviously I am not suggesting some sort of noise revolt. Tried it. Failed. Seriously, what I am talking about is being intentional about making time for quiet in your life. Because there is so much more noise all around us than ever before, we have to make time to quiet ourselves and tune in to the condition of our own souls. The times that I find myself most out of sorts are when I have lost sight of this and I have allowed the noise to drown out the deep cries of my own heart. It is then that I run back to the quiet so that I can hear. God will never yell above the noise in our lives so we must position ourselves in the seat of silence in order that we don't miss what He wants to say. And it is so worth the effort. When was the last time you shut out the world and just listened?

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