The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Good
The Good thing about quiet is the beautiful music that is there. The swirling tones that enfold you.
The Good thing about quiet is how I can hear better what you are thinking and feeling when you aren’t speaking to me. The quiet has its own voice. Its own knowledge. Its own approach to life. It can go inside you to places that you aren’t even aware exist.
The Good thing about quiet is that it is the voice of God. It is the absolute silence of creation. Of love. Of majesty.
The Bad
The Bad thing about quiet is how soundless it becomes when waiting for an answer to a prayer. Its muted ocean roar subsides. It becomes an empty space that reveals nothing. Nothing but waiting.
It’s the same with visions. There comes a time in every vision, every search into the mystery of God, where all goes still. Placid. It is the illusion that nothing is moving in the vision. I’m not moving. And that which I seek is immobile, also. It becomes the waiting game. Who will move first? When will the impetus to move come? And where will it come from?
This kind of quiet is a grinding on my very bones. It’s not quite an unnatural silence. Because no silence goes against nature. But it is the sound of panic. The fear that the prayer will go unanswered. Or that I am now completely lost in the vision, and that I will never find my way out again.
This kind of quiet is the sound of my banging myself against the hard silence of God. The closed door. My pounding.
It is the sound of my need to have the door opened again.
The Ugly
The Ugly is the hiss: Silence!
Or, more simply put: Shut up!
It is one thing to be in a crowd that overreaches itself in excitement and noise, and to be hushed.
It is quite another to speak a simple sentence aloud, perhaps not expressing a simple thought, but words that form an attempt to explain oneself, and to be told to Shut Up!
My words had made the cranks in the other person to come to a halt. And he didn’t like that.
He didn’t like that one bit. He didn’t want to start the cranks up again only to have to think about what I said.
It would make his brain hurt.
So he stops the process altogether.
But that stopping leaves a stench.
Like left-behind garbage.
The Command of Quiet is a weapon that wounds. And is meant to.
It is a control button that is pushed when all else fails. When the other’s brain malfunctions and doesn’t want to right itself.
At least not with me around.
From God, to waiting, to stench: Quiet.