The Search for Silence

More Meditations from a Parkinson's Riddled Believer

I ended A Short Meditation on Miracles back in June with a comment about pursuing the meaning of God’s silence. Instead of “pursuing” maybe a better word would have been “searching” for meaning in God’s silence. Searching doesn’t have the same vigor as pursuing and I am not sure that I should be so vigorous as to assume that I am ready to understand the silent Him. But I am curious enough to remain on a search as noted in this favorite quote from Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer:

“What is the nature of the search? you ask. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”

During my legislative days, I often included this quote in the congratulatory letter that I mailed out to my young constituents who graduated high school in that particular year. A little flattery along with some advice goes a long way toward getting a new vote in the next election, right? Only a cynic would think so.

Beyond offering benign encouragement to graduates, I chose this quote because of what it encouraged me to do personally. For those of us with a chronic disease that becomes the “everydayness of his own life” has to become “aware of the search.” The search for what, you might ask. The search for meaning. The search for a cure. The search for an alternative to despair. Maybe even the search for hope in God’s silence.

Several years before her lupus diagnosis, Flannery O’Connor wrote about hope and despair in A Prayer Journal:

Dear God, About hope, I am somewhat at a loss. It is so easy to say I hope to—the tongue slides over it. I think perhaps hope can only be realized by contrasting it with despair. And I am too lazy to despair. Please don’t visit me with it, dear Lord, I would be so miserable. Hope, however, must be something distinct from faith. I unconsciously put it in the faith department. It must be something positive that I have never felt. It must be a positive force, else why the distinction between it and faith?

Is there an inverse relationship between hope and despair? Can we experience both at the same time?

Both Percy and O’Connor initiated a search that would keep them from despair. Percy from a family history of generational suicide; O’Connor from her lupus diagnosis. Together they shared an uncommon belief in the Roman Catholic Church within a Southern culture awash with Baptist and Protestant churches, what O’Connor described as a “Christ haunted South.” Christianity and the hope that springs from it is steeped into our souls - whether from the Eucharist or the Word.

One of my earliest memories is of my mother reading Bible stories to me before bedtime. Those stories along with the three-services-a-week Southern Baptist Church attendance requirement formed the foundation of my understanding of Christianity. Like Tolkien and Lewis, I believe that those stories are true. Less so the sermons that I heard. Many of them preached by the self-centered or the self-deluded. Even so, my faith has never been far away in thought or even sight. From my front yard, I can see the steeple of the church where I was baptized and then cast out, or at least my family was. These are some of the mixed signposts directing me on my search.

Along with the difference between pursuit and search, there lies a difference between the prepositions “of” and “in” when examining God’s silence.

“Of” suggests that silence is a closed door that stands between us and God. We have not arrived at this door but we hope that He is at home when we do.

“In” suggests that the door is open as we travel. Meantime, we are immersed in God’s silence, waiting for some word. An inkling even. Or a small voice? Maybe.

I am careful what I ask for.

A description of an encounter between God and Elijah from I Kings 19:

¹¹ And He said, “Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks 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.

¹² And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

¹³ And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice unto him and said, “What doest thou here, Elijah?”

We should be patient to know why God remains silent as He draws us to Him.