Quietude

I love the quiet after all the kids have fallen asleep, when everything is done for the evening.  But it is not truly quiet.

It’s amazing how un-quiet a modern house is.  There are hums and buzzes and whirring even if you have turned everything as “off” as it can go.

I remember one of the more quiet moments of my life, out in the woods, late at night, far from any other person, just laying on the ground looking up at the stars.  Even then, when you listen there are always noises, little sounds of life, movement, breath, wind.

Another quiet moment was in the middle of winter in the middle of a vast snow field, far from any trees or civilization.  When I stopped and held my breath I could almost here silence…but not quite.  There was dripping, whooshing, and cracking…the Earth holding it’s breath.

The most quiet moment, and darkest, I ever had was once when I went spelunking and we wiggled our way through this narrow tunnel where to enter you had to worm your way through with your arms above your head when I was at the end where it opened up into a small cave just big enough to sit in I turned off my light and again I held my breath.

There, at last, I though, was perfect Quietude.

But no, I had brought noise with me.

There in the silence, far below the earth in the deep darkness I could hear my own body breaking the perfect soundlessness.

My Heart.

When all other sounds were stopped I could hear the blood as it rushed through my ears, I could hear the sound of my heart beat.

But in a way, there was peace in this realization.  Just as there was no where I could go on this wide earth that I could escape the sounds of life, particularly my own, so it is with the Lord, there is no place so remote, no hole so deep and dark where we cannot hear His Voice if we will but stop and listen to the Quietude of it’s sound.