Finding Silence

Finding Silence

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."  Thoreau

                  We all must feel this urge at sometime in our life.  We want to be alone with the water, the mountains, the land, and God.  We don’t want to be interrupted
with phone calls, responsibilities of cleaning, working, cooking, or other daily demands.  We want silence. No phones, no “mom” can you help me, no pleas to cook for a church dinner or fold bulletins.  We are weary of work and our coworkers. We want to be alone.

            We have illusions of living in a cabin in the woods and discovering what life really is.  Just as Thoreau sought his answer to what life really is, we all search for it.  Yet, our years come to an end, and we have lived life without this “aloneness”. We are too busy living.  It is a catch 22 conundrum.  No time to be still.

            Perhaps we could bottle up the early hours of quiet .  We could seal them tightly so the silence would not escape and open it only when our mind felt like it was exploding.  We could carry the bottle and open it when the grandkids are screaming in the car.  Better yet, we could pop the silence cork when friends are negative or hurtful or the world news is too depressing to digest. 

            We must drink life out of our own glass and guzzle or sip.   We live on this earth on a need to know basis.  Amidst the crises, we need immediate answers and to know how to find silence, peace, or divine direction right in our own backyard or back room. This silence and searching must be discovered by our own design.  It is essential to our quality of living.  We must ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, to show us His path for our lives. In this silence, His leading will be evident.  But, as we leave the quietness, will we follow His directions, His recommendations?  With silence come answers and responsibilities.  

       Are we ready to go into the woods, the backyard, or the porch and seek silence? Perhaps we are too busy walking, running, worrying.  We must learn there is no set path for us to study; instead, as we walk we make our own path of discovering who we are and what is our purpose.