In 1866 an Oxford undergraduate began a poem with
the stunning line
Elected
Silence, sing to me, and beat upon my whorled ear.
The poem itself was called The Habit of Perfection
and was all about the writer's sense of call to a life of clerical contemplation.
Choosing quietness - the prerequsite for listening, can be - as Gerard Manley
Hopkins reveals - a sensous choice, even when it involves depriving
oneself. We cannot have it both ways - noise causes us to hear very little
- silence allows us to hear wonderful sounds.
Last week I had a study
day down in the Dumfriesshire hills. At lunchtime I went for a walk. It
was a beautiful and still day, and after about 15 minutes I noticed that
the rustle of my waterproof jacket as I moved, was blotting out the sounds
of the rural splendour that stretched away to the horizon in every direction.
It reminded me of the time I was was hired to record beautiful Holy Week
worship in Iona Abbey and kept being thwarted by the combined rustlings
of hundreds of waterproof jackets. So I stopped, removed my jacket and listened
and realised how many beautiful sounds there were all around me - the breeze
in the trees, birdsong, sound of distant sheep - and there, the bleating
of lambs - the bleating of lambs? I realised slowly that this was the beginning
of March - that these must be the first lambs of the season (literally their
first day out, I learned from the farmer later). The great rhythm of earth's
rebirth. And the way that birdsong evokes something like joy - not happiness
or laughter, but something I must call joy. From Shelley's poem, 'To A Skylark':
Teach
me half the gladness that thy brain must know
Such
harmonious madness, from my lips would flow
The
world should listen then - as I am listening now
It occured to me as I made back for the village, what
a good metaphor for spirituality is 'listening'. The difference between
being someone who is unaware of the rest of the world, because all they
can hear is the noise they are making. I wondered if the countryside provides
a wonderful metaphor for the richness and fulness of life - its glory, its
beauty, the great rhythm of life's rebirth, and death, and resurrection,
of grandeur, of humility, of intimacy. And I wondered if my waterproof jacket
(made of heaven know what man-madeness) might be a metaphor for what so
often constitutes our lives - our activity, predominently for our convenience,
expedience, costing the earth and costly to the earth, disposable. And all
the while making it impossible to hear the real world.
Perhaps what
I need to learn about, I thought, is a 'spiritual listening' - something
that's possible for any and all of us, whether or not we're able to physically
hear well. I resolved to wear my old leather jacket more, even when it's
raining. Just then, just as I was beginning to feel that I was getting 'in
touch' with the centre of all being, on the long straight that leads up
to the village, my attention was aroused by a sound - I looked up and saw
what appeared to be a wierd, huge extra shape attached to the very top of
the tall trees that surround the church. As it banked back onto the horizontal,
I realised that it was an RAF Tornado coming at me. Despite not uncommon
flyovers down these glens, I had never in 20 years seen one as low as this.
For an instant I imagined the aircraft was out of control and plunging into
the field beside me - but an instant later, of course, it passed me at tree
top height - so that I really could see the pilot (if not the whites of
his/her eyes). I'm sure I don't need to describe the frightening ferocity
of the noise that accompanied this 3 or 4 second episode. The earth, that
great earth, where Roman soldiers chose to build their through road so long
ago - this ancient earth, and all of us creeping across it, literally shook.
My tiny thoughts about the nature of things shattered and demolished by this machine that some would see as the ultimate symbol of all that humanity can engineer to wield against itself - the frontline weapon in theatre of destruction. Try and meditate with one of these things in front of you. If it's that frightening flying past, what's it like when it's firing missiles at you? What are our chances of being spiritual listeners in a world firing spiritual missiles at us - and for us city dwellers - globally connected to the pain of victims of mass murder in a sister European city of culture - and all within moments of the unleashing of terrible evil?
We read a couple of Sundays ago that after being baptised by his cousin, Jesus tested his vocation by fasting in the wilderness (the 40 days,our inspiration for Lent). Moses too had ascended wild Sinai for 40 days and nights to receive God's Law - and now Jesus walked into the silence of the Galilean desert to prepare himself for the revoutionary restating of that Law. We can imagine that the silence revealed the world to him as it does to us - and how it played havoc with his imagination in his encounter with the tempter. Jesus modelled spiritual listening for us. He didn't write his wisdom down - he exemplified oral tradition in his telling of parables - stories to be listened to - so that the spiritual listener might 'see' how things really are - like speaking of God as a vineyard owner wanting to grow juicy figs - and Jesus the gardener, proclaiming the patience and loving-kindness of a just God - and knowing the power of a story to linger in the mind, he puts to shame all of our instinct for thinking that the failings of others are worse than our failings. The radical theologian Kenneth Leech said that solitude and silence are necessary:
'to preserve each one of us from superficial action, from exhaustion, from fanaticism..... Today the desert has come back to the city. It is in the city that we see marks of sterility, of dryness, of desperate isolation. Never has the city more urgently needed its contemplatives.'
And from Isaiah's poem to the exiles in Babylon...
55:3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so
that you may live. 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your
ways my ways, says the LORD.
55:9 For as the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your
thoughts.