I'm wondering today if ever you have experienced silence in your walk with God? If you have then you are not alone. Sometimes the answers to our heartfelt prayers just don't come. I've been thinking a lot about this subject of silence and I thought I would share a short writing from a Milligan student which was published in 'The Phoenix' this year. The writer's name is Ben Foote. I don't know Ben personally but I loved what he had to say. It is rather long- but the answer to this quandary of silence I believe comes in his last paragraph- so read on, Dear One!
On Silence
by Ben Foote
Some people say he is everywhere. Well, I haven't been everywhere. I know for sure he is in the mountains. At least during the morning when the smoky mist is cradling the peaks and the sun is bouncing through their tiny beads of water, ricocheting warmth into the valleys. I know he is in my father. The man is getting older, but with each gray hair that surfaces, another step towards wisdom is reached. I know that he is in music- Aaron Copland, to be precise. I am pretty sure that he is in puppies. Regardless, I think it's terrifying that he might be everywhere.
I am young, but I have heard whispers from him. It is a strange experience. You don't realize you've heard him until he is already gone, but it hurts your ears anyway. He smells like burning leaves, which is a good thing. The first time I heard him, I had locked myself in the laundry room. I was huddled in the corner, trying to listen for him. I crouched there mumbling on and on to him, but I might have been talking to myself- I'm not sure. Eventually though, the brick in my stomach dissolved, the fear and trembling disappeared, and I was able to stand up. That's when I knew I must have heard him.
The second time I heard him, I was on a hiking trip with my father. We decided to stop on a bald and enjoy the view of the sweeping Blue Ridge range. I wrote in my journal and listened to a blue bird in a nearby tree as it chirped away. The mountains looked like a freeze frame of the ocean in the middle of a raging storm. The rolling hills careened and tilted sporadically, eventually vaporizing into my vanishing point. Any minute I thought the frame was going to jump back into motion and with a deafening roar, the mountains were going to roll over me on that tiny bald, and I was going to drown in all that soil and leaf and green. Then it did. And that's when I knew I must have heard him again.
It has been almost two years since I last heard his voice. If feels longer. People say that silence is necessary during a conversation, so maybe he and I are just having a very long discussion.
Sometimes I lie awake in bed until four or five in the morning. I invent people and situations in my mind. I give them a setting and I make them happy. Then I give them a conflict and I make them confused. Then I fall asleep and by the time I wake up, I have forgotten their conflict, therefore I don't invent any solutions. I wonder if they are still out there looking for resolve. Sometimes I wonder if he invented me and then fell asleep. Is there a trick to waking him up? I can be a quiet person. I like being alone every now and then, but who struts around not talking to their friends for years at a time?
My life right now is very different from how I imagined it when I was in high school. I imagined traveling the states, living in a barely operable fifteen-passenger van with my buddies, self-booking shows and playing songs I've written for two or three people a night. In slow motion, I could see the venue's stagnant cloud of cigarette smoke mystically billowing away from the microphone with each syllable I released. Instead, my life turned out better. I fell in love. Even greater, that same person fell in love with me. I guess that has to be proof he is still speaking.
However, it still seems a bit ludicrous. Two years of silence? I guess he is trying to teach me something. Maybe silence, in a round-about way, is supposed to equal affirmation. Even though I don't hear him, I believe there is something being silent. I guess the only reason I am upset about this is because I truly believe he is real. If he was just another one of my late-night characters, I could simply invent a resolution and move on. But I can't. And that is enough to hold on to until the the sound comes back again.
I hope you see why I loved what Ben had to say so much. I loved his honesty. But mostly I loved his resolve. In the moments where God seems silent- praise him for there is something being silent-- that something is our All Powerful God.
Believing God,
Lori
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