ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: O God our defender, storms rage around and within us and cause us to be afraid. Rescue your people from despair, deliver your sons and daughters from fear, and preserve us in the faith of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” I Kings 19:11-12.
If the phrase, “sound of sheer silence” appears to be a contradiction, it is only because we assume that silence is nothing more than the absence of sound. Saints and mystics of many different faiths know, however, that nothing could be further from the truth. Monastic communities that make it central to their spiritual practices know that silence is often the womb in which more profound wisdom, clearer insight, deeper discernment and more penetrating vision is conceived. Thomas Merton once remarked that “in silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.” He goes on to point out that:
“For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.” The Power and Meaning of Love, Thomas Merton(c.Sheldon Press 1976).
We Americans live in a silence averse culture. Our malls, doctors’ offices, and transportation stations hum with display screens and pumped in music. Radios and televisions play non-stop in many of our homes. Our parties and gatherings are permeated by endless chatter. I believe that much of this exists to spare us from the awkwardness and discomfort of silence. After all, silence is discomforting. It is every host’s duty to ensure that lively chatter flows unceasingly among the guests. If talk at the dinner table should hesitate, the host must step in to fill the uneasy silence by “making conversation.” A host failing to do so would be considered rude and inept. Silence is the antithesis of sociability.
It is not noise alone that keeps silence at bay. Much of what we digest in our reading or viewing on various media drives silence from our minds and hearts. The white heat of our politics and cultural discourse often prevents the discerning consideration of deep moral concerns that can happen only in the depths of silence. Much of our civil discourse these days comes in the form of angry and snarky posts, tweets and messaging that only illicit the same in reply. We talk over each other because we are so cock sure we know what our conversation partner is saying, that it is entirely wrong and that we have the arguments to defeat him. Before one is finished talking the other is already concocting a counter-argument. It is all reminiscent of the lines of Simon & Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence:
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
If ever there was a man who needed the refuge of silence, it was the Prophet Elijah. There is a back story for our lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures. Elijah had been in exile for months as Israel’s King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel were systematically eradicating the worship of Israel’s God, destroying God’s places of worship and replacing the worship of God with the near eastern religion of Ba’al worship. At God’s direction, Elijah came out of hiding and confronted King Ahab. He challenged the King to assemble the prophets of Ba’al to offer a sacrifice to their god. Elijah, for his part, would build an altar for sacrifice to the God of Israel. Neither would light a sacrificial fire. Both would wait for their respective deities to do the honors. The god that answered by fire, lighting its altar, that god would be known as God indeed. To make a very long and entertaining story short, Israel’s God sent fire to consume the offering on Elijah’s altar. Ba’a’l was a no-show.
Such a dramatic demonstration ought to have settled the matter. For a short time, it seemed to have done just that. Ahab was convinced. Jezebel, the true power behind the throne was not impressed. She vowed to avenge the humiliation of her god with Elijah’s blood. Once again, Elijah was on the run. We find him curled up in a cave wanting to die. When God asks him what he is doing in such a pitiful state, he replies, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” I Kings 19:10. You cannot fault Elijah for feeling that way. He has been living all alone in exile. He alone was willing to challenge the royal household’s adultery at the risk of his life. Now, everything he thought he accomplished has come crashing down all around him and, once again, his is all alone.
But in truth, Elijah was not alone. Once he managed to get beyond the noise of his enemies, the noise of his seeming failure, the noise of savage winds, earthquakes and fires, he learned that there were seven thousand people left in Israel that, like him, were “very zealous for the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel.” He also learned that God had more work for him to do. Most importantly, he learned that he will no longer be alone in his work. He is to anoint Elisha as his companion and successor. This is no rosy forecast. The redemption of Israel is going to be a long, difficult and violent road. It is obvious that Elijah will not see the end of that road in his life time. But in the shelter of holy silence, with all distractions without and within put aside, Elijah is finally able to see a way forward for himself and his people.
Saint John of the Cross reminds us that “it is best to learn to silence the faculties and cause them to be still, so that God may speak,” Once you get over your discomfort with silence, you find it liberating. There is comfort in knowing you cannot and need not control the powerful currents sweeping around you. There is peace in knowing that you need not have all the answers to all of your questions. There is freedom in knowing that you do not have to have an opinion on everything and that it is not always necessary that you speak your mind. There is huge potential for healing, reconciliation and peace when you finally learn that it is often enough just to listen and understand without passing judgment or giving advice. There is power greater than any earthquake, wind or fire in the sound of sheer silence.
Here is a poem by Billy Collins about silence, the many contexts in which it occurs, its power and its fragility.
Silence
There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.
The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.
The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.
The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.
And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night
like snow falling in the darkness of the house—
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.
Source: Poetry (April 2005). William James (Billy) Collins (b. 1941) is an American poet. He served as the Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He was a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York from which he retired in 2016. Collins was recognized as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and selected as the New York State Poet for 2004 to 2006. In 2016, Collins was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 2020, he has been teaching in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton. You can read more about Billy Collins and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 