The Gift of Silence

The loudest sound here at the farm is the silence.  It is like a running stream of water racing over rocks and makeshift dams caused by falling limbs.  It is constant.  Steady.  Overwhelming.  Once you have stood in it, felt its refreshing power moving all around you, and know its moods, it becomes an unmistakable memory to which you are forever drawn.  

There is no getting away from the silence that envelopes this part of the Creation.  It is the first thing which greets those who arrive from the busy world at the other end of the dirt road that goes from here to the paved road and the last thing heard before the eyes close in sleep.    When I arrived here after nearly four decades in the pulpit, I could not see it as a gift from God.  It was just a farm.  I was happy to be here, but my eyes were closed to the way being surrounded every day by the stillness of Creation would change forever my view of myself and my perception of God.  

As I moved away from a ministry of preaching and doing the work of the church to a ministry of being and writing, I slowly discovered that the muse which inspired me was the Creation itself and the silence that filled it.   It was, and is, a Holy Muse.  Truly, the silence here is like the silence Elijah heard on Mount Horeb  After a great wind came, after the mountains and rocks split in the earthquake, and after a great fire, Elijah heard in the sheer silence the voice of the Lord. (I Kings 19:11-14)  I never expected it to happen here on this simple farm.  I never expected to find myself in a place so filled with a silence which would enable my spirit to hear that small unmistakable voice of God speaking through every part of the Creation which surrounded me.  It is most assuredly a gift of grace.