We’re at the halfway point for this column, halfway on this year-long journey to becoming an “ordinary radical.” We’ve thought about several topics since beginning in January—examining our connection to “stuff” and purging and donating in an effort to curb that connection; figuring out how to “do small things with great love;” meeting people—those we typically think of as recipients of our charity—face to face and allowing those encounters to change us; and exploring the idea of justice and how we can live lives that cultivate it, rather than hinder it.
But as I read my previous columns and reflect on where to go next, what I’ve noticed lately is a lament (particularly on the blog) of how I haven’t found time to do the things I’ve wanted; of how this is tough work; of how I feel somewhat paralyzed at times, discouraged and unsure of how or what to pursue further.
And then it dawned on me. All along, I have left something out; the magical, mystical, most important ingredient on this journey—God.
Seeking God’s will and word through a process of quiet discernment is something the Record’s editor and publisher, David Harris talks about in his editorial this month. Seeking God’s leadership in everything from our life’s calling to an important decision should be the first thing we do as Christians, but often, it’s something that is forgotten (or simply never gotten around to).
David and I (along with the Record’s senior editor, Andrew Faiz) recently chatted about discernment and spiritual guidance over coffee in a hotel restaurant. We weren’t talking about my column, but about life in general; a life filled with work and church and family and volunteering and commitments and over-scheduling and conflict and challenges—and the need for solitude and silence amidst such chaos and busyness. A long talk with my minister discussed much of the same; that even our prayers are so often filled with us talking, talking, talking, that we forget, or are unable, to listen. That amidst all the noise and questions and uncertainties and confusion, we can’t hear God’s still, small voice.
I’ve just begun reading Invitation to Solitude and Silence by Ruth Haley Barton. In it, she says taking time for solitude goes beyond the idea of simply getting away from it all. “Solitude and silence are not self-indulgent exercises for times when an overcrowded soul needs a little time to itself. Rather, they are concrete ways of opening to the presence of God beyond human effort and beyond the human constructs that cannot fully contain the Divine.”
I think the restlessness, the despondence, the frustration I’ve been feeling with this column and blog of late (and in many ways, life in general) likely comes from too much trying to figure this out on my own. Too much of what I think, what I want, what I think I should do. Scrambling each month to try a million different things (and feeling hopeless when the list doesn’t get checked off), instead of waiting to hear where God is leading me.
Now none of this means my quest for how to be an ordinary radical as a suburban mom with a young family has come to a close; on the contrary, it feels like it’s beginning again. Beginning where it should have started in the first place.
I’m still using Shane Claiborne’s works and words as a guide; a very useful map and aid to help tackle serious questions about life and faith and service and community that we all should be asking ourselves as Christians. So what does Claiborne have to say about discerning God’s will for this work?
In Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, Claiborne references Augustine of Hippo who said, “Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.”
I love this image—a “delightful hidden place inside” that is free of noise. It seems too good to be true.
Claiborne takes things a step further, suggesting that the voice of God can be found in unexpected places if we quiet ourselves long enough to notice.
“There is a beautiful moment in the Bible when the prophet Elijah feels God’s presence,” writes Claiborne in The Irresistible Revolution. “The Scriptures say that a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart, but God was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. It was the whisper of God. Today we can hear the whisper where we least expect it; in a baby refugee and in a homeless rabbi, in crack addicts and displaced children, in a groaning creation.”
It’s time to be quiet.
