Monday, March 30, 2020

VIRAL THOUGHTS 2 - THE SILENCE OF GOD (Part 1)

WELCOME to the first of two short reflections on ‘Godly Silence’.

I WONDER IF YOU’VE NOTICED HOW QUIET THE WORLD IS?  Taking the bus to Tesco on Thursday, the roads were strangely empty and, apart from all the applause at 8 o’clock on Thursday evening, our neighbourhood is hushed. And so, it seems, is God. I’m sure there are many who wonder at the apparent Divine silence in the midst of this pandemic and consider that confirms there’s no such thing as ‘God’; or, if there is, God is certainly not good, otherwise he would have done something, a view which many embraced, for example, in the face of the horrors of past Holocausts.

Many have tried to understand why God seemed absent when needed by his people.  Some have realised that, having created humankind in freedom, God cannot step in and interfere – God has to remain hidden. Others say that to deny God in the face of tragedy would compound the nature of evil, whilst many realise that to take God out of the equation simply limits the resources we have to cope in such situations. And some, looking at how suffering is dealt with in the Book of Job, realise it’s right to cry out about it whilst not letting it become overwhelming, something that we also see in the way Christ lived through his Passion, which we’ll shortly recall during Holy Week.  They look at the events of that Week and realise – God is right there, in the heart of pain and loss, suffering and death, through the agony of crucifixion when even Christ cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’  Yet, in the end, he commended himself into the hands of his Father.

There’s a mystery to suffering which we can never fully understand, but one thing is clear. The generational upheavals societies experience due to war or disease reveal what lies within – both the ‘bad’ and the ‘good’. Without such appalling tragedies, would we ever know what lay in the depths of our humanity?

I WAS BORN a year after the end of the last World War and, for a long time, knew nothing of its horrors.  My generation were told “You’ve never had it so good.” and that, for many, was correct.  Occasionally some might have suffered from disasters, floods and storms, but it was people living in countries remote from ours who experienced war, famine and infectious epidemics. And I, for one, wondered at people who, in such places, were still able to proclaim their faith in God, who said inshallah, it is God’s will.  Could disaster be God’s will?  Is that what they meant?  As part of a generation who believed widespread disease had been medically eliminated and that any sickness could be cured by a visit to the doctor, the thought that pain and suffering were the context of belief suggested a cruel God was the cause.  It is God’s will.    Now, for a while, the West – like most of the rest of the world – is again subject to those twins of pain and suffering and in it all, there seems only a Godly silence.

FOR SO LONG we, in so-called advanced societies, haven’t needed God, “we’re all atheists now” one BBC news presenter asserted recently.  Only in emergencies might God be privately addressed, as some turn to this ancient Mystery for solace.  But we no longer need a supernatural magician to solve our needs.  We expect them to be answered instantly – at the press of a button – and forget the long, patient, creative and sometimes, painful ways in which those needs are answered.  Whatever lies beyond our immediate human comfort-zone isn’t of great interest to many who are satisfied by spending hours on their i-phone, visits to the pub and gym, holiday’s in far-flung places and Saturdays watching sport.  Not that there’s anything wrong with any of that – in moderation – but ‘Life’ for many has lost any sense of mystery and is merely something which ought to give us what we want when we want it. Now, when that life has suddenly ended for a while – and may not return for some – there can be feelings of dread, dis-orientation and profound confusion – even anger.  Our landscape has profoundly changed and we’re going through a seismic, spiritual shift.  Yet still some say: God is there.

GOD IS PRESENT in so many small and great acts of kindness and compassion, of selfless service and outreach (as far as possible). God is still there in the wonder and mystery of the rest of creation which, at times like this, we need to contemplate.  And God is there in silence, as God has always been.  There for us in the same way he was when another nation found itself in a wilderness, lost and confused, longing for what had been and tempted to complain; there long ago when someone sat, fearfully, at the mouth of a desert cave and wondered at the sound of sheer silence; there when a Man was driven into the desert for forty days, tempted to despair; yet where, in the silence of solitude, he found himself.  There when people flocked to the emptiness of the Desert at the start of Christianity.  There for those Religious who embrace solitude and silence. There as we must fast from that which we normally look to, to feed us.

GOD IS PRESENT in our hearts, a place some rarely visit.  When you’re occupied with so much else, stillness and silence can be qualities to be avoided avoid.  So, let us pray: ‘Penetrate my heart, O God, by the radiance of your glance’ because it’s the person who befriends these two, solitude and silence, who can enter that holiest place. 

MIGHT THIS BE A TIME, then, when our culture has the opportunity to discover its depths?  When, un-distracted by noise and activity, we can see what we’re capable of through all those acts of selfless generosity; when we have the opportunity of realising what lies within in the silence of our hearts.  No longer able to travel to far-away places we suddenly have the chance of discovering our hidden, silent soul.  But we need those who have travelled further into the depths of the heart, the centre of our being, to guide us on the way.  Those who have realised that prayer is more than just asking for things, it’s a way of heart speaking to Heart.  That’s the subject for tomorrow evening, at the same time, when I’ll also offer some reflections on the connection between silence and prayer.  In the meantime:

Be silent,
still,
aware,
for there,
within your own heart,
the Spirit is at prayer.
Listen and learn,
open and find,
heart-wisdom.
                             Christ.

No comments: