quieting, day 6

Come to Stillness:
Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:

Uncrowd my heart, O God,

until silence speaks

in your still small voice;

turn me from the hearing of words,

and the making of words,

and the confusion of much speaking,

to listening,

waiting,

stillness,

silence.

                               ~Thomas Merton

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 23

Scripture for the Day: 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

Reading for Reflection:

     A second, more positive, meaning of silence is that it protects the inner fire.  Silence guards the inner heat of religious emotions.  This inner heat is the life of the Holy Spirit within us.  Thus, silence is the discipline by which the inner fire of God is tended and kept alive. 

     Diadochus of Photiki offers us a very concrete image:  "When the door to a steambath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good.  Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy.  Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy.  Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts. (The Way of the Heart by Henri J.M. Nouwen)

None of us is very good at silence.  It says too much. (Telling the Truth by Frederick Buechner)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Be Still My Soul

Be still, my soul: the Lord is on thy side.

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change, He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: thy God doth undertake
To guide the future, as He has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: the waves and winds still know
His voice Who ruled them while He dwelt below.

Closing Prayer:

O God of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and

rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be

our strength: By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee,

to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou

art God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(The Book of Common Prayer)