Peace be with you!
And while I still have time to say it: Merry Christmas! The Season of Christmas isn’t over until this Sunday’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. So if your Christmas tree is still up…do the happy dance and turn on those lights with joy!
My apologies for not posting last week. Clearly, I have some work to do with regard to keeping track of time in the midst of roadtrips and family chaos. This week’s post is hampered by the lack of the video reflection. Despite an investment in new equipment, Fr. Freeh advised me that the sound quality of the next few installments is terrible. “Just toss ’em,” said he.
While he suffers technical laryngitis, I picked up the personal variety while visiting kin for Christmas. Throat on fire, I started keeping my mouth shut, and saying as little as possible when I had to say anything. It was a revelation, how quiet I could be. (Ask my husband.)
And suddenly…I realized I had a theme for this week’s post: the classroom of silence.
Our culture is bent on filling our lives with noise. And we willingly cooperate. TV, radio, videogames, movies, newspapers, magazines, Twitter, Facebook and, yes, blogs and websites…fill every nook and cranny of our waking moments.
I’m struck by how all of that…stuff…is generated by other people. And by how much of it is entirely irrelevant. Celebrities. Sports. One-day sales. People Whining Because They Can. (Example: Outrage about men with bad manners making wolf whistles at a woman walking in NYC; while the sale of women and girls as sex slaves goes ignored.)
We’re drowning in a sea of Other People’s Ridiculous Stuff. Caught up in the tide, we then go on to generate our own Ridiculous Stuff. We breathe in, and exhale complaints, gossip, sarcasm, pettiness. Our heedless words contribute to the general noise level in the culture at large…and inside our own heads and hearts.
When do we get a chance to know who we are? What we think? When do we get a chance to know ourselves in the light of God’s mercy and grace?
If the world had its way: Never. The world needs access to your home, your mind, to tell you its lies at least three times, so you begin to believe they’re true: profanity and blasphemy are acceptable; fornication a necessity; fidelity an impossibility; faith is illogical and atheism is rational; happiness can be found in power and control. And then there’s just the people who need to sell you something.
Silence is the world’s enemy. Silence gives our souls the room to grow in God’s presence. Time to pray, to study. Time to work with a depth of thought and care. Time to ponder timeless truths. When we come back into the world, refreshed, we live in the world, but we are not of it.
Like the hymn points out, there is an inextricable link between silence and holiness: “Silent night, holy night.”
In this year of grace 2015, be generous to yourself and find silence in your life. Be generous to God, and give that silence to Him.
God’s best gifts come in those silent, holy moments.
May your New Year be joyful, healthy, and filled with God’s best blessings!
Good News Spirituality 