I had a most unsettling experience in church a week or so ago. A lot of churches say the 'Lord's Prayer' every Sunday. You may or may not be familiar with it: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by your name, your kingdom come ... "; The church we attend doesn't say it very often, but this week we did and the person leading it wanted us to pause and reflect after each line on the meaning of what we'd just prayed.

"Cool," I thought. "That will be awesome. A good chance to quiet down and reflect." I thought the pauses would be a nice 10-15 seconds. I was wrong. Each pause was 2 minutes. What was profoundly unsettling was that two lines into the prayer, I thought my head was going to explode. Half way through I wanted, with every fiber of my being, to stand up and yell, "Please, speed up! I can't stand all this silence!!!" What was wrong with me? How is it I've become a person who can not sit still in silence in a room full of people for two minutes at a time? I talked with others after the service.

While, my state of silence induced panic may have been the most extreme, everyone I spoke with had felt some level of similar discomfort. I've been thinking a lot about this experience since. It's led to more questions than answers.

Why is it that the first thing I do in the morning is flip open my macbook to check and see if anyone emailed me while I was sleeping? Why will I watch the same sportscenter four times rather than just turn the TV off? Why has it been longer than 25 years since I drove in a car by myself without music or NPR playing? Why do I right now have music playing on my computer to keep me company in my office? Why do I check email dozens of times a day? What would it look like if I could learn to love quiet like I love music and conversation? What if I could see both as a gift from God?

I know I often wonder why God doesn't seem to speak to me with more clarity or more demonstrably. Perhaps, and I strongly suspect this is the case, God is speaking all the time but I'm too distracted with the noise I fill my life with to notice. Sometimes God speaks in conversations and movies and songs, but perhaps God also yearns to whisper to me in the quietness of life. I can only guess at that, since I virtually never turn down the volume.

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