Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-26-24

I invite you today to swim with me in a Stream of Consciousness. Or float downstream. Maybe to swim a little bit against the current… but it is a gentle current. Choose the analogy. Random thoughts, but in the same stream, so to speak.

I have visions of a gentle mountain stream, not of riding on roaring waves or fighting strong billows or tacking through surface winds. Rough seas are exciting, even when dangerous. These are busy times… and loud, and fast, and demanding. But calm waters have a place in our lives too, even metaphorically. So I have been longing lately for quiet times. Respite. Even solitude.

Some Christians are suspicious of “meditation,” but that is because it sometimes has been hijacked by secular and pagan folks. The Bible, however, tells us to mediate on God’s word. Contemplate. Reflect. Do we do that, often enough, in the year of our Lord 2024?

Let us remember the Scriptural injunction, “Be still and know that I am God.” Whew! What power and wisdom in that quiet command. Softly and tenderly Jesus calls to us. To be still… before anything else.

One of the most profound experiences of my life was spent at an abbey in California. I signed up for a week of silence – no lessons or leading or programs; just a room in a rural monastery with monks. No phones, no electricity, no talking allowed except for one common meal of the day… when, actually, very few brothers or visitors spoke anyway beyond prayers and a brief homily. Overnight there was a library lit by candles if one chose not to sleep. On the spacious grounds there were pathways, benches, and Stations of the Cross.

I thought by the end of the week, between my Bible, notebook, and myself, I would have new insights about God. I did not, really. However I felt incredibly closer to Him. I cannot explain that, other than receiving blessings from Being Still… and knowing He is God. Softly and tenderly He called to me.

At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps, I recall a friend, the heir to a giant industrial fortune, who adopted a Discipline of Silence, wherewith he chose to not speak a peep for one day a week despite conducting his routine activities. It was not a spiritual (that is, Biblical or Christian) exercise but something closer to, in fact, an aspect of a character in one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I am not sure of its efficacy, but the last I heard of him, he made the news for twice taking a pick-axe to Donald Trump’s stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Strange. I suppose he did not speak in his own defense in court either, but otherwise I saw no blessings or insights from wearing his virtual Cone of Silence.

Back to the other extreme. Also in a Catholic setting, I was invited once to an ancient priory (nunnery) in rural France. In the evening service lit by candles, the sisters and novitiates chanted for a full four hours. Whether in Latin or French or ancient French I do not remember, or could not distinguish: I was a visitor, not a participant. It was equivalent, therefore, to a form of enforced silence, accompanied by quiet a capella chants, as I was alone with my thoughts.

I also cannot explain it, but the soft and tender musical solitude had me thinking, and meditating, and contemplating, and praying, and reflecting. I found myself smiling and crying, sobbing and refreshed, convicted and liberated, guilty and free. All in all, closer to God that evening than I could have planned or imagined. Softly and tenderly He called to me.

Back in the 1800s Henry Adams wrote about visiting a world’s fair where a main attraction was something called The Dynamo. This was at the dawn of what we now call the Industrial Age, and the Dynamo dominated an exhibition hall; several stories high, it was a busy conglomeration of valves and pistons. It shook and made noise and… did nothing, produced nothing. It was a form of industrial performance-art, meant to represent the coming Machine Age.

And so it did. Adams went further, in his mind, seeing it as a modern version of the cathedral: a symbol of society’s hope and faith and trust and devotion. And so it proved to be. It was also something he could not anticipate. It was huge; noisy; overwhelming – just as our life, today, has manifested those characteristics, totally eclipsing our privacy. Our own space. Our solitude. The nearly extinct qualities of contemporary life!

“Be still.” How hard has that become? When sometimes we might feel the need of the Holy Spirit to shout at us – to remind us of God’s Truth, Jesus’s love – the Word gets through to us best when it comes, instead, softly and tenderly. Father knows best.

Be creative; be intentional. Find a quiet time… get to a quiet space… savor a quiet moment. And be still, knowing of great things, softly and tenderly.

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