silence

I'm wrestling with so many things all the time now -- stuff I write in my blog seems to be useful for my thesis/future book, and vice versa. Judgment is, today and always, a hot-button issue for me....

This morning, during silent prayer in worship, I was contemplating how threatening silence was (this theme was mentioned in a recorded Jeremiah Wright sermon that I listened to this week as a class assignment -- what do we do when God is silent? This happened, or I asked God for that....and God was silent). As I tried to pray this morning during "silent" prayer, I was aware of the pianist playing softly in the background -- at this particular church, we pray silently until the piano stops playing. There really is no silence. And then I think of the one congregation member who mentioned to me how frustrating it is to have silent prayer be not only not silent, but also proscribed in length of time by the pianist! This lovely Christian man judged that hard-working woman's motivations or intent, even her craft (her job -- for it is paid employment) itself. There's that word judgment again....

Can we judge what the piano-player is doing? Are we loftier as church members and/or practicing Christians? This piano player is married to a church member -- I am not sure if she is a member herself. But she is paid by the church to play the piano, so should that not be what she is doing?

Why do we put up such obstacles to God? Why can we not attend to God? It seems we would rather gripe about our neighbor, about the distractions and limits we perceive that our neighbor puts before our God. Hmmmm. We should be able to see past them, pray past them, hear beyond them, even feel beyond them. For is God not in our hearts? Are the limits really ours? Do we fear approaching God intimately or even amongst the clutter and chaos that is life? When God is always with us, can we not reach God completely unless there is silence in this God-created world? Are we protesting too much? Would we rather concentrate on minutiae than really give it all to God: distractions from our neighbors, frustrations with our neighbors, acknowledgment that we, ourselves, are not perfect and all these perceived obstacles point to our separation from God?

I'm good at asking questions. Not so good at providing the answers. That's all I've got for today....