Reading Mother Teresa--Silence

Abraham Kuyper

When he opened the seventh seal, 

there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Revelation 8:1 

Walking home from school for me has always meant walking west into what is, this daylight-shortened time of year, the first warm glow of sunset. For years I’ve told myself that someday I’d just keep walking into all that buttery glory, head west like Huck Finn and millions of others who once heard--as some still do--the siren song of a dreamy new life. Someday, instead of stopping at our place, I’ll just keep walking. Like an old bull bison, I’ll leave the herd forever, wander out somewhere into the hills along the river, and hunker down. 

Such odd visions came when life was just too busy. I might well have had eleventy-seven papers to read, more pouring in daily. Maybe I had a gig off at a high school chapel, some speeches to write, an exam to give (36 more papers) that afternoon, and a junk drawer full of little complexities too mean to mention. 

I’m sure I’m not as busy as Mother Teresa was. Those Calcutta streets made demands on her and her time that may well have prompted her to look up wistfully toward beaming sunsets too. The dogged vow she took – the promise of utter loyalty to the Lord’s will – created a listening ear in her that probably never shut down because she wanted, above all else, to hear the voice of God obediently, never to miss even his most indistinct whispers. 

Which is why, I suppose, she loved to tell herself and others that “in the silence of the heart God speaks” (32).

The idea strikes me as medieval because I really ought to be connected these days, right? I ought to have all the gizmos. Last week our grandson stayed around after dinner and then just begged to watch Ninja Pandas or some such thing. Begged. It was difficult for him – as it is for any of us who are tuned in 24/7 – to entertain silence. He has to be entertained. 

As do I. My iPad keeps me connected and silence at bay. Yes, I carry a phone. If I say "Alexa" voices from both floors of the beg to answer my questions, "Okay, Google" gets me four, if we count our phones. I read the Opinion page of the New York Times and Washington Post far more religiously than the gospels. I’m serious.

I know Mother Teresa is right, and so does anyone else who listens. “In the silence of the heart, God speaks.” Maybe that’s why I’m addicted to getting up early every morning.

But then maybe not. I know well and good that every little whisper in my ear isn’t the voice of God.

Still, we all know she’s right: Listen again: “In the silence of the heart God speaks.”

Some of my ethnic and religious ancestors jammed a copy of Abraham Kuyper’s To Be Near Unto God into the pockets of their barn jackets a century ago or more, so special were those meditations to them. It's a how-to really; the focus is how exactly to achieve moments of eternal bliss, just moments, glimpses. “To be near unto God,” for Abraham Kuyper, meant maintaining a daily walk that was always within whispering distance of God’s own voice. No residents of this world can possibly live near unto God 24/7, Kuyper might have said, but we can come blessedly close for occasional divine moments.

I don’t doubt that Prime Minister Kuyper would have heartily assented to Mother Teresa: “In the silence of the heart God speaks.”

Which is only to say, I suppose, be still and know.

It’s just before six. I’ve said enough.