Listening to silence

 In a world which seeks to make us busy, many opinions can be thrown us on a daily basis. I am often taken from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep we listen to many different voices. These voices can often seem to be contradictory and pull us in different directions at the same time. In fact, it is this dis-ease which can not only affect our mental health but our physical health as well. If we try to please all the different voices we find ourselves torn apart.

This is the importance of finding a place where we can listen to the silence within. This is not easy because we have often been taught that unless we are actively doing something we are not worthwhile. Thus we plunge ourselves into activity so that we can prove that we have purpose and meaning. It seeks to crowd out the empty spaces within us by having no spare time to be with ourselves. We don't want to be seen to be wasting time doing nothing.

Yet it is this encounter with no-thing that is at the very heart of our prayer. It calls us to encounter our true self which is more than the things we do or the successes we achieve. The place where we have been loved into being. This silent place may seem to be a "waste of time" but it may be the most productive place that we can encounter in each day. By allowing our prayer to draw us into a silence of being present to this moment we seek to integrate our day and become whole. Rather than being fragmented, we listen to the inner voice which brings healing and strength.

The need to be restored in prayer is essential as it brings to notice what heals us and brings wholeness. It allows us to be truly ourselves before God and each other. This restoration allows a balance which sees that in present to no-thing we become aware of how God is present in all things. 

The Kingdom is close at hand

 Our mission field is provided by the one square metre in which we live. This becomes more self-evident when we become aware of physical distancing in this age of the pandemic. Often this can feel like holding people at arm's length for fear that we may be infected by the virus. There can be a suspicion which eyes off what the other person is doing and whether it conforms to our understanding of the safeguards that have been put in place. Yet whether it is border closures, travel restrictions or simply the daily movement around people we are called to attend to what happens to the spirit within us. We want to ensure that we do not become distant from the spirit that dwells within.

Thus while we can be aware of the constant flow of bad news which can fixate us on events beyond our control, we can miss how our lives can make a difference in the place where we live. There is a need to discover as the disciples did how we are called to become people who transform our local environment. This means that we not only recognise and develop our own skills and talents. It also means that we need to discover how these can build up the realm of God in our own space. 

We are called to become people who seek to accord our actions with the promptings from within. That is not just to seek our own good but the common good. This calls for our lives to witness how our prayer and reflection guides us to grow closer to God in our own community. By paying attention to what brings life rather than a disaster. By converting our own hearts we become present to the living heart of God in our community. Our lives proclaim that God is at the heart of all and in all.

What do we set our hearts on?

 The desire for something or someone greater than ourselves lies at the heart of our quest to be truly human. It is almost as if there is something in our DNA which naturally seeks union with the whole of creation and the heart of the creator. We sense a restlessness which desires more and we can tend to spend a lot of time and money trying to discover that one thing which makes sense of this itch within us. The prompting which calls us to go beyond ourselves and discover new land in which we can be at peace. In the gospel reading, Jesus asks his disciples what are you looking for? This seems to be a straight forward question, but within it lies a fundamental willingness to yearn to be ourselves in seeking out the answer.

When the disciples ponder this question they come forward with their own question, where do you live? This searching and seeking seem to be innate within our human experience. We desire to know where it is that God is and what God is about. In someway we seek to be provided with a clear and simple answer. Like the disciples, we yearn to be at one with God in the midst of our searching. It is almost as if we seek to discover something or someone beyond ourselves who can provide that answer and in doing so become fulfilled.

This is especially true when we see the disturbances all too prevalent in our world. When we are often besieged by events beyond our control and which disturb our imagination. Whether it be the events on Capitol Hill, whether it is trade conflicts, whether it is the haunting spectre of a virus which cannot be contained or simple the everyday worries about where our next meal will come from we can find ourselves seeking a person who can provide the answers to our worries and concerns. Yet when our life is driven by fears of what menaces us we can become willful and reluctant to seek the person who is at the heart of all things.

Yet what we discover is the simple response of Jesus to come and see. It is in the very willingness to spend time with him that we discover who we are and who he is. This is not just about stepping aside from our daily tasks to spend time in prayer but discovering how we see the world differently. This seeking causes us to be at peace with ourselves as we discover it is in the ordinary graces of each day that God is revealed. It is about encountering the holy every day rather than in the extraordinary. This is the true miracle of life that God's presence can be experienced through the graced encounter and the divine touch of human life. The willingness to become at one with God at the heart of all things.

Become like water

 At the centre of our Christian life is the sacrament of baptism in which we die to ourselves to become one with Christ. In this sacrament, we hear the words of God spoken saying "You are my Son, the Beloved: my favour rests on you" This this becoming one is not actually a denial of self but rather a revelation of who we are called into relationship with. It calls us to move beyond ourselves to discover how we can discover who we truly are. Like a homecoming, we find our selves also beloved and favoured.

In a time of the pandemic, this can often allude us. I am very conscious of this living in Greater Sydney where we are identified with being the source of COVID and borders are closed to us. In discovering that the normal freedoms that we are familiar with like travel to particular places we can start to feel anything but one and free. When our humanity and compassion focuses more on what excludes us rather than what brings us together we can start to perceive both an internal and external fracturing. There is ambiguity in which we see adverts inviting us to holiday in places to which we cannot go and see our identity shaped by events beyond our control. In many ways, COVID is modern leprosy in which people can quickly be seen as unclean because of where they live and the risk of the exposure of something which is deadly.

As Christians, I believe that the closure of borders can also lead to a hardening of hearts and a stubbornness which alienates people from one another. There, of course, needs to be safeguards for people's health and wellbeing but where these become draconian they can start to breed isolation of spirit which is greater than the physical isolation. As Christians, we need to notice how our prayer and our actions find ways to give glory to God in our everyday life. This is evidenced by the hard work of people in the frontline of contact tracing, the willingness of people to get tested and the following of basic hygiene and the wearing of masks. Yet in the midst of all this, we are also called to discover how these are safeguards not barriers to relationships. There are questions which naturally emerge about how long border controls can isolate us from each other rather than giving opportunities for better track and trace. The call for a spirit of cooperation between states and nations is of pressing concern. One can wonder where the spirit so present in the bushfires has dissipated in the face of a virulent strain of the virus. 

I believe that our responsiveness in the face of this ever-present threat to our health and wellbeing is found in the reading from Isaiah which asks us where is the spring of our salvation? What will bring us joy which will bear witness to God's providence? In our own time and in union with the Baptism of Jesus we are called to notice how we become one through the spirit, the water and the blood. We witness to a life which is not our own. It calls us to become creative not only to how we respond to the challenges of our time but how we allow the waters of baptism to well up inside us.