What does the wind tell you?

My pre-Lenten retreat reading was The Holy Way by Paula Huston. She examines ten spiritual practices: solitude, silence, awareness, purity, devotion, right livelihood, confidence, integrity, generosity, and tranquility. There is a lot of food for thought and room for action.

From her chapter on silence she writes:

When I looked at my own life and asked myself whether I could make it more peaceful, I was not at all hopeful. …
First, however, I had to learn how to seek out and refresh myself in the pools of silence that lay hidden along the pathway of my noisy daily round.(p. 40)

She had already begun a practice of solitude, but discovered that being alone is not always quiet—rather we often create our own internal noise. Once she quieted her own mind enough, she began to notice things.

The first thing I noticed was that the wing feathers of flying ducks make a hushed but definite squeaking noise, like the stiff rustling of hurrying petticoats. This, of course, was not silence—but it required some measure of silence for me to even notice it.

Next, I heard the dawn wind stirring the tops of the pines. This reminded me of the verse in John in which Jesus is telling his disciples an important fact: "The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3: 8). I realized that a person who did not regularly listen to the wind would miss entirely the point of Christ's metaphor—and would miss a fairly significant theological statement about how things work in the spiritual realm. (p. 41)

We had wind gusts while I was "on retreat," up to 50-60 mph. I will tell you that I notice the wind when it howls around a house at those speeds, or as it buffeted the car with sand on our drive. But most days, I don't notice the sound of the wind. Now, inside my own house, I hear the hiss of the radiator and the rumble of the furnace, and outside in the back yard I can see the dead leaves that remain on the honeysuckle vine shaking somewhat, but I don't hear the sound of the wind. To Huston's point, I wonder how often we don't notice the movement of the Spirit, just as we don't notice the sound of the wind unless it really is howling around us?

Having written that, I walked outside for a few minutes to see if I really could hear the wind that was stirring the leaves. I stood next to the vine and even bent down next to the branches that I saw moving, but all I could hear was the susurration of the cars going down the parkway a block away, a plane overhead, and one car going down the street in front of the house. As I turned to walk back in, there was a small gust, and finally I could hear it rushing by my own ears.

Who Has Seen the Wind?

by Christina Rossetti

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

What will it take for each of us to pay attention to the movement of the Spirit? Who has seen the Spirit at work? Huston recommends finding and spending time in silence. I suspect that is a relative silence—I have been nowhere that I can recall where outside sounds don't intrude, but even that will help still our jangling selves, so that we can know the presence of the Spirit of God. Perhaps like the trees we can bow our heads and know the Spirit is passing by.

Perhaps we just need to

Be still,
and know that I am:
God.
Psalm 46: 10.

Listening: a.m. symphony of place

I've been reading The Listening Book by W. A. Mathieu in the morning.

He has several wonderful exercises about being aware of sound (p. 10-11): "Get a pencil and paper. Become aware of all the sounds you are hearing now, this moment, as you read. Make a list of them. Close your eyes from time to time. Swivel your head slightly to change the mix. Make a sweep from nearby sounds to distant sounds. Fall into the distance. Become transparent. Now fall into the nearness. Make a sweep from the highest sounds to the lowest ones. Disappear into the stratosphere, reappear underground. If your space is quiet enough you will hear your own internal sounds: breathing, maybe your blood in your ears. Or the subtle sounds of cloth against cloth, skin against skin. Count everything; write everything down. Use words economically. Later, if you like, you can set the scene and go into detail."

Here is mine this morning:
computer humming
car swishing by
clatter of keyboard as I type
deep breath
cracking joints as I roll my shoulders
scuffing shoe on the floor
plane flying overhead
creaking chair as I sit back
twittering of bird outside
fabric rustling against my hands
distant humming of cars on the parkway
scratching of skin
ticking of clock in the other room
the neighbor's wind chimes
the dripping of the water fountain
the call of the morning dove

Time to go for now, but I feel much more in the present, aware of my surroundings, and conscious too of how bombarded by sounds we often are. No wonder it is so hard for us to sit in silence to find God. We cannot find silence, and the associations that we have with each of these noises takes us away to some place or time, not here, unless we come back, paying attention just to the now. Perhaps this is where God is. "Be still and know that 'I am'--God."

Silence and Sabbath

Silence is scarce.

As I start to write this, wanting to write on our congregational experience during Lent of sitting in increasing amounts (a minute increasing by a half minute each week) of silence, my daughter is in the room next to me watching a re-run episode of "The Lucy Show." Somehow it seems like a fitting dose of reality. How hard it is to find quiet time, time to sit in silence. This Sunday, it seemed to me as if people were sinking into the silence. There didn't seem to be the shuffling and rustling that we've had in previous weeks. Note to self: don't announce the amount of time that we'll have and then people don't wonder when it's supposed to be up. But there was a power, an enfolding or upholding of the gathered community as the silence deepened. I think we were making space for God.

Even early in the morning, in my supposed quiet time, it's hard to find silence or space for silence. The kettle whistles, the furnace clanks, refrigerator whirs, the computer hums and cars swish by. Even now, although it is quieter since my daughter went upstairs, my chair squeaks and I hear the clock ticking as my fingers are tapping. Why is it easier to find God in the silence than in the busy-ness and noise? I'm not denying that it is—I'm just wondering why we're not wired to find God in rush of everyday?

I read somewhere recently that Sabbath is the most radical contribution of Judaism to the world, or maybe it was the most radical contribution of any religion to the world in 4000 years. Not that Sabbath is always silence, but it is holy time, and it seems to me that we were achieving holy time on Sunday in our silence. Somehow in my mind I equate the spaciousness of Sabbath with the quality of silence we had.

My calendar popup reminders intrude as I try to sit in silence again. And I suspect that if I close my eyes to sit in silence now, I may be asleep—restless night from aching shoveling muscles last night.

If we lost scents and ritual in the reformation, it was a much bigger loss to have lost Sabbath keeping, whenever it was that we did. Blue laws, that remnant of Puritanism, really didn't ensure Sabbath, although the laws helped to control the options. How hard would it be to buck the tide and keep a day of Sabbath in a Christian tradition? How hard is it to find 3-4 minutes of intentional silence? Yet, what an absolute blessing it is when we do.

I tried yet again to sit in silence, and my mind has too much chatter just now. So, there it is. Yesterday I felt enfolded by others around, like being wrapped in a communal blanket of silence. My mind was not nearly so noisy.

I'll miss the silence during service when Lent is over. I'm not sure that I've made enough space for God, but it's been a special part of the season, not a giving up, but a getting.