the twenty minute window

A word with power is a word that comes from silence. 

So say the Egyptian Desert Fathers of the third century A.D. 

So says one of my old spiritual mentors, the late Henri J. M. Nouwen.

So says the life and speech of Mama Maggie of Cairo, one of my new spiritual mentors.

Our world is wordy, says Nouwen, and we all know that. A conflicting, chaotic rush of verbage. Often we are word-saturated and we tune it all out.  Often it won't let us ignore it.

Where is silence to be found? 

For me it’s a window of about twenty minutes in the early dawn.  Before the dog rushes in, tail flying, near missing my coffee.  Before news and music and blogs and vehicle engine noise rush into my world. 

For those early twenty minutes, I am relatively still.  Sometimes, as Mama Maggie prescribed, I silence my thoughts; listen to my heartbeat.  Then I listen to my spirit.

Then...I silence my own spirit, and try to listen to God’s Spirit.  It’s hard to sort out what exactly is happening in those moments—what are brain synapses firing, what is sleepy REM half-dreaming, what is  true listening, and whether I’m listening to myself, or to God.

But I believe that

in the heavenlies

at the recesses of the dawn

God, always attentive

is sorting that out for me,

or in spite of me.

I do know I get blips, impressions.  I probably receive them throughout the day, carefully customized for me from the Creator.  Spoken in love to me. 

Do I hear them?  Sometimes. But the highest probability of my hearing them is in that sacred early morning twenty minute window--

when I’m still and listening

when the car engines are not humming

when the school buses haven’t arrived

when the sunrise is still a distance away

when silence

calls.

Is there a place, 

a time in your day or evening, 

in your world, 

to listen 

in silence 

to the Great Creator?