Rummaging for God
Tell me, how do we protect the sacred fire within? How do we quiet ourselves until we can finally hear the soft, slow rising dew of our innermost thoughts? How do we hear the space where God invades us? How do we hear the electric roar of cicadas in late June, though their sound has felt ubiquitous since May? It is so pervasive that you can miss it entirely. Like the way our own precious breath is forgotten, though it is the thing we do most. Or how we forget to see our stretched-across-bones skin, largest organ though it may be. Can we become silent enough to be surprised by God like the ancient prophet Elijah was when he heard a still small voice? Like Elijah, can we run for our life into a cave, ask to die, and after coming to a place of full surrender—arriving squarely at our rope’s end, to use an old adage—be met by revelation? By God himself demonstrating that though He can do anything, He does not always choose to be dramatic. He does not always enter the way a playwright might write Him into a scene. Say, with a mighty wind strong enough to break boulders and tear apart mountains; with an earthquake that reminds every creature on earth of our own damning fragility; or with a fire that burns hot until it is fire no more. These things are headlines. You don’t have to be good at noticing to see them. You don’t have to surrender to the fire before it burns you. It will kill you fighting or it will kill you dancing by the water’s edge, blissfully unaware. You don’t have to notice a thing before it burns everything down.
But this introduction of the still small voice, it makes me pause. The way the text says God was not in the great wind, or the earthquake, or the fire--“—but after all that, a still small voice.” (1 Kings 19:11-12) Perhaps this is a call, an invitation to notice.
Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century Spanish priest and theologian who co-founded the Jesuits—an order of Roman Catholic Priests whose main focus was missionary work, teaching, and spiritual formation—introduced the prayer of examen to be practiced twice a day, at noon and in the evening. It is a prayer in which we silently and mentally walk backwards through our day, recounting the events while looking for God, His grace, Presence, peace throughout. We start with gratitude, always. And in the moments we recount ourselves hiding from Him, we ask forgiveness. It is a prayer of intentional and thoughtful noticing. It is a way to mine for the still small voice over and over again. Ignatius of Loyola understood that the tasks of the day might make an extended time of prayer difficult, but the prayer of examen is a discipline that anyone can do. We only need to become still, to listen, to see, to notice, to invite the Spirit to open our eyes. The prayer of examen is meant to bring clarity. Maybe we are more like water, like a pool; maybe it is when we finally become still that we begin to see.
When God shows up in a “whisper” (as some translations put it) is when Elijah is no longer a prophet hiding in a cave, afraid for his life. Rather, God speaks and Elijah knows what to do next. He gets up, he knows to go towards Damascus, to do the work fitting a prophet. God speaks and Elijah remembers his calling, can blessedly use his legs to walk in the right direction, his hands to once again anoint kings.
It is worth noting that when God wanted Moses’ attention, it was through a burning bush—not a burning redwood or even a palm tree. He did not choose something tall that is easily noticed from miles away, but rather a bush. Just a bush, a small bush.
There is a man I knew a long time ago. He spoke at church from time to time and said some things that seemed very unreasonable, but one of them stands out as the kind of thing a prophet might say. “Throw your television out the window!” he passionately declared one Sunday morning. People listened in silence, nothing still or small about the way this man paced and shouted. Someone later quipped, “Let me know if and when you throw your tv out the window, because I will catch it and sell it.” Others were very offended; surely this is going too far, they thought.
I was too young to own anything of my own, least of all a tv, so didn’t feel strongly about it one way or another. But now I wonder if, in his own unruly and abrasive way, he was encouraging us to hear the still small voice. Maybe he suspected television can get in the way. He did not yet know about social media or the smart phone, how it would become like another limb on the figure of the western person; how its absence burns our palms. How its constant call toward entertainment and voyeurism not only clashes with but dampens our need for dreaming, stillness, listening, creativity, problems that are not easily solved by scrolling, sliding to the right, and storing up likes like we are in for a long hard winter lean on any understanding of our own intrinsic value short of what @mommy36524/7 has to say under our caption.
All of this serves to block out the noise of our own longing. It is the blare of the television obscuring what the love of your life is trying to say to you at dinner. Henri Nouwen, Dutch Priest, professor, writer, and theologian, warned that “Ministers are tempted to join the ranks of those who consider it their primary task to keep other people busy … But our task is the opposite of distraction … how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence.” (“The Spiritual Life: Eight Essential Titles by Henri Nouwen”) I would argue that these words extend to us all. I would argue that we would do well to shepherd our own inner person, to keep our soul ablaze by lighting it with the fire of silence, listening, contemplative prayer, breathing deeply with gratitude, acknowledging this moment as a unique gift, acknowledging we are loved.
“We need to find God,” Mother Theresa said, “and He cannot be found in noise and restlessness.” So then we awkwardly become quiet. And often it is not a dreamscape. Often for me, it is a long string of minutes that I am hoping will end soon so I can resume the busyness that feels so dang useful and feeds something deep and hungry within. But lately I have found glimpses of something rather pleasant stored up and waiting for me in silence. I’ve been going to physical therapy, lately (bear with me, this relates). I sprained something in my hip and it’s given me the excuse to get in my car and drive all by myself somewhere (already, I am sold). I tell TJ I am going to the spa and I shut the door behind me and wholeheartedly look forward to what awaits me. The very first ten minutes of my session consist of laying down on a heated pad in a room all by myself. I will be honest, my first instinct was to grab my phone. But I leave it behind and close my eyes and become still without and within. I start constructing and deconstructing lyrics and unearthing thoughts I’ve never met. I feel God in the pilgrimage. I once read that contemplative prayer is like taking an elevator where you get on at the floor of your brain and descend into your heart. My body is part of this wonderful descent. The heat on my back feels like straight up vacation. Ten uninterrupted minutes feels like a locked door, a deep breath, an ancient act of being that stirs up both longing and gratitude. And the silence is starting to feel less hurried. Sometimes it even turns into an inward song, a glimpse at my own interior that I remember, that I actually like (hi, old friend, nice to see you again!), that I forgot to even miss until now.
I was on TJ’s radio show this past week. Listen to us get an impromptu therapy session last Friday by clicking here. Today, TJ asked an A.I. Bot to explain why I like it so cold in our bedroom at night (he wears a winter coat to sleep sometimes!) You can listen to that here. You can subscribe and listen to TJ’s daily podcast at theTJshow.com and on most podcast platforms.
You may already have read him, but in a similar vein to your piece today, I highly recommend anything by Fr. Jacques Phillipe. A few titles are 'Searching for and Maintaining Peace,' 'In the School of the Holy Spirit,' and 'Time for God.' God Bless you and your family.