Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of traffic on I-95. The highway is close, but not in my backyard and occasionally I wake up to the howling of a semi barreling through the night. Some nights the low whistling of tires on asphalt sounds like a ghost haunting the moors in some Brontë novel.
Most nights I can tune it out.
I live in a world of constant noise, though.
I know this because on the rare occasion that I can sit in silence, I can still hear a ringing in my ears like I’ve just gotten back from a rock concert.
Finding silence these days, true silence, is a luxury.
And it’s not just physical noise that bombards us each day, distracting us, making it impossible to concentrate and focus, it’s psychological noise too.
It’s the constant chatter that goes through our heads all day.
Pay the bills take out the trash eat something sleep now go here no go there feed the cat change the oil visit the dentist call your mom don’t eat that are you crazy slow down speed up when are you going to get this done NOW DO THIS NOW!
Remember that old commercial “Calgon take me away.”
When Pastor Debbie revealed that when she arrives at church each morning, before she does anything else, she walks the grounds, making a loop along the water before winding her back around to check out her new found oak trees … I was so envious.
I want that kind of quiet time.
So last Saturday, the coolest day of the season so far, I drove to church. I watched Jaci set up for the food drive, and then I took my camera and snuck down to the Memorial Garden and the water.
I had spotted what I thought was a little blue heron dabbing its toes in the water as if trying to decide if it was warm enough.
My feet crackled on the fallen pine needles, but I stepped slowly, just out of sight of the bird.
It was quiet.
I was quiet.
The air smelled of autumn, something I didn’t think was possible in Florida. I didn’t think autumn existed here, but down by the water, surrounded by plants and trees that here dropping needles and leaves, cozying up to one another, ready to hunker down—I could smell it—wet, moist, decomposing plant life that always signaled winter around the corner when I lived up north.
I snapped a picture of the bird.
I was only a few feet away and still so quiet he hadn’t moved.
I followed him a few more feet and then I was too close. He didn’t even look at me. One second he was standing there by the water, the next second he was air born.
As always, times like these remind me that God is to be found in the stillness and the silence.
And as much as possible, I need to run from the noise that intrudes on my life and take shelter among the trees and the birds. There I will find God.
