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The hymn, Dear Lord and Father of Mankind is one of the most popular of all hymns. It often comes near the top of the BBC Songs of Praise polls. It was written by John Whittier, an American Quaker, who was a direct descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers. He also wrote the hymn Immortal love for ever full. He would have been rather surprised to find either hymn in any hymnbook and possibly horrified that they are sung in churches. Both come from a long poem called the Brewing of Soma in which he compared the exuberance of certain types of Christian worship with the stimulation achieved in Hindu worship by drinking an intoxicating beverage called Soma which cause hallucinations. He likened this to certain types of Christian worship in which the worshipper displayed excitement and unrestrained bodily movement. He was especially scathing of the popular evangelical hymns of people like Sankey and Moody and he had a particular loathing from their hymn Hold the Fort for I am coming (rarely sung these days) which he regarded as vulgar and much too hearty!
Of
course, Whittier was a Quaker and as such would not have sung hymns at
all at worship. It is his Quaker beliefs that shine through both Immortal Love and Dear Lord and Father of mankind. Stillness, Quietism, peace are the recurring themes and as one commentator on hymns has said,
O calm of hills above
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love.
This is not always evident in modern liturgy though the compilers of both the Alternative Service Book and Common Worshiphave tried to build in silences at appropriate moments. It is often, however, a time for throat clearing and a sudden interest in the service booklet whose pages are rustled distractingly. Part of our problem is that modern society is generally afraid of silence and full of noise.
Stephen Cottrell in his small book Do nothing to change your life (mentioned in this week's Lent Extra) once led a school assembly in which he said
We
live in a crazy, frantic world. Our world is full of movement and
noise. Even this morning in the few hours since you woke up you
have probably filled your time with the radio, the TV, the computer,
the play station; you've probably phoned someone and texted half
a dozen others; as you got dressed, washed, showered, ate your
breakfast, came to school, noise and busyness have been accompanying
your every move ....
Contemporary writers like Sara Maitland and Lucy Winkett have taken the contrasting theme of noise and slience as their way into helping us find God again in the nosiy clamour of the world. Sara Maitland in her Book of Silences explores the theme through a personal journey away from the busy world until she eventually ended up in a crofter's cottage on the Isle of Skye. On the way she travels physically from one location to another but the journey is spiritual and takes her into the experience of silence in the story of the Church, starting with the Desert Fathers and Mothers who imitated Christ by seeking God in quiet places.
Lucy Winkett, Canon Precentor at St Paul's Cathedral, has written this year's Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book entitled Our Sound is our Wound. I have only just begun to read it so I can't yet do justice to her argument but she is exploring how, in the midst of the cacophony of sounds in modern life, we might hear God's voice.
It is something Elijah had to discover when he was up against it and felt totally isolated. He stood on the mountain where the Lord promised to meet him to strengthen him. There was a wave of sound - wind, earthquake, fire - but he did not hear the voice of God until all that had ceased and there was sheer silence. It was then that he heard God - the still, small voice.
How hard is it to hear God in our modern world and still harder when we try to crowd him out with busyness, activity, frenzied rushing around. How easy is it to say that there is no time for prayer, for Bible study and Christian reading. Look at our timetables and our 'to-do' lists. My desk is filled with hastily scribbled Post-It notes telling me that I have to do this or that or the other. There are days when I never move out of my study except for hastily taken meals as I grapple with mounds of paperwork, telephone calls, computer searches. When my computer went wrong recently, I panicked. When I drive somewhere without my mobile phone, I worry. What if I break down? Crazy and irrational thoughts as we become enslaved by all the trappings of modern living.
Well might Paul write to the Philippians that the end is destruction because our minds are set on earthly things. He speaks of the destruction of those who abandon god and heavenly things which, as a result destroy our personalities as we lose sight of the real priorities and values of life. If only we could e-mail God and twitter away with him on FaceBook things would perhaps be easier! But then we wouldn't really have a truly deep relationship with him. E-mails and texts are often superficial ways of communicating - sometimes hurtful even and stressful because demands can be made on us which would never be made face to face. When my computer crashed recently I lost over a thousand e-mails that I was storing to act upon. My life hasn't got worse but better. I no longer have the stress of having to deal with them. It is immensely freeing.
And there's the clue. We really do need to get our priorities right. We need to do a form of exercise which was quite popular a while back - that of tidying up our lives. The BBC had a reality show called Life Laundry in which participants ruthlessly got rid of clutter in their homes, sometimes by emptying the contents onto the front lawn and then getting rid of all they no longer needed. It would take me about a year to do this but what about Spiritual Life Laundry? We could look at our lives, what we fill them with and be ruthless in chucking out stuff we didn't need to do. It would be very liberating. It might even give us more time for God. If we want it.
But, what if all our busyness and noise is really just a way of avoiding God? Maybe not consciously or deliberately, but somewhere deep inside we might prefer not to hear God speaking to us. More likely, however, we are the victim of circumstance in a way of life which ultimately leaves us fragmented and alienated.
A lot of divorces happen when people have stopped making time for each other and have stopped listening to each other. Often that too, isn't deliberate. It just happens. Our diaries get crowded and work takes over. We stop having rest and relaxation time with each other and we eventually become strangers to each other. We even become strangers to ourselves. Many a mid-life crisis can be described by the cry, "I don't know who I am anymore."
It's exactly the same with our relationship with God and if we don't build into our lives, times to be still before Him, we will lose sight of who we truly are - God's beloved.
It's like the story about St Antony who was relaxing with his companions in the desert. A hunter met them and chastised them for their laziness. Antony told him to draw his bow and shoot an arrow. He did and Antony told him to do it again, and again, and again. Eventually the man cried, If I keep doing this my bow will break. Antony said, Exactly, and if we do not rest we too will break.
This week's Life Calling session is about the image of God in each one of us. One of the ways we discover God within us is to rest, reflect and rejoice. We are urged to build back into our lives the notion of the Sabbath - something the secular world has abandoned. As Christians we are to imitate Christ who withdrew often, in the midst of his busy ministry, to simply Be with his Father. What will rescue our humanity in today's frantic world is to rediscover that before we do anything, we are. Being is much more important than doing.
Sheila Cassidy, a Christian doctor and writer, once told of a time when a colleague just came into her room and sat on the edge of her desk just chewing the fat and chatting about nothing in particular. He was a busy surgeon but he found time to just be with her. She recognized that he was giving her a very precious gift and he was helping her to get her life in perspective just by that simple act.
God calls us first and foremost to Be with Him rather than do things for Him. Our faith is not defined by how much we do in Church or in society, but by how much we simply are able to be with God, learning from him and listening to His voice speaking to our hearts. How can he tell us of His love for us, his immense and eternal love for us, if we don't listen; if we don't let him love and care for us.
Simon Tugwell, a Roman Catholic monk once did a series of Lenten meditations on the television. This is part of one I wrote down as he prayed.
Enter into the chamber of your heart.
There is a kingdom of God.
In the utter stillness within.
From that depth comes human joy; human love, human activity.
Relax into the assurance of His love, His care;
He has provided for every moment.
Be still and know that I am God.