Friday, May 14, 2021

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Katie Snipes Lancaster

Spiritual Practice: Silence
We just switched from incandescent (or maybe fluorescent) lights to LED lights in the sanctuary, and it makes a noticeable difference in our worship “production” these days (the only thing that’s weird is that its less and less weird every week to record worship in an empty sanctuary on Saturdays), but what I noticed was the noise. We host an in-person weekly prayer service at 12:15 on Tuesdays, which includes 90 seconds of silence. The first time I “made way for silence” in that prayer service after we got the new lights, it was so quiet I had trouble concentrating on prayer. Wow! I hadn’t realized how loud our sanctuary had been, and how quiet it now is. No more quiet hum. No more buzz. It is as if our sacred space has recalibrated toward a spiritual silence after probably decades of fizzing, whirring, and murmuring with electricity and light.

Then last week, were you home when power went out in all of Kenilworth and most of Wilmette? It was even more quiet. The building and subsequently the whole neighborhood sighed a deep breath, relaxing into an unfamiliar silence.

We don’t know how noisy our lives are until suddenly the sound cuts out and we find way for a new peace and quiet.

Where are the quiet places in your weekly rhythm? Where might you be able to enter into silence, an intentional silence that listens for the presence of God held within?

Daily Prayer
Holy God, meet us in the silence,
Wordless, quiet, hushed.
Be with us.
Amen.