Virtute.org

One of the most beautiful things is being outdoors in a heavy snowstorm where there’s no wind. It’s a frightening thing if there’s no home close to warm up in, but standing alone, it’s a beautiful and quiet thing. Voices and footsteps are muffled, and there’s a near perfect stillness in the air. I have a vivid memory of a snowstorm like this as I was walking through the parking lot at the BYU Art Museum, probably when I was 17 or 18.

We live in noisy times. One of my flaws is that I crave constant input. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts in the shower. I watch TV while I clip my nails. I have magazines next to the toilet. I will be eating, watching a football game, and surfing the web simultaneously. It’s jarring how much my mind demands distraction. I don’t think I’m alone in this. As a result, demanding quiet time for meditation and pondering starts to feel like an urgent need. On some level, this constant flow of stimulus is diabolic. It makes me think of Elijah:

“And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.”

Christmas is like this in many ways. It’s both stillness and trumpets. On the one side, “Silent Night”, and on the other, the Hallelujah Chorus. (Side note – this paradox reminds me of Chesterton’s comments on the symbol of the cross and some of the seeming contradiction in Christian theology. I’ll footnote the quote.*) There is both silent awe and there are exultant shouts of joy. I’ll write about the joy later, but it’s the silence I’m thinking about now.

Recall in the Book of Mormon the silence between the voice from Heaven and the arrival of Jesus. Note also the half hour of silence after the 7th seal is opened in Revelation. I think about the Savior’s forty days in the wilderness, and I speculate that the country in Judea is not that different from Utah, where I grew up. I remember frequently going out into the desert to be alone, whether out on the west side of Utah Lake and further into the Great Basin, or out into the San Rafael Swell. I think it must have been very still and peaceful at times for Jesus as he fasted.

For me, the many Christmas carols and hymns that talk of silence and stillness are a reminder to quiet all the distractions and noise. To know Jesus, we must be stretching our minds out towards Him. If we’re flooding our senses with too much stimulus, our minds will lack the calmness we need to pray or ponder properly. A verse of one of my favorite hymns, “Take Time to be Holy” gives some direction:

Take time to be holy, the world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret, with Jesus alone.
By looking to Jesus, like Him thou shalt be;
Thy friends in thy conduct His likeness shall see.

The third verse of “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” is relevant too:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing.

I’ll quote Bonhoeffer again, though I know I’ve used him frequently. In the seminary he directed, it was the practice to have morning and evening devotionals. Before the morning service and after the evening one, the students were to be silent, dressing and preparing without speaking. Bonhoeffer’s reasoning: “We are silent in the early hours of each day, because God is supposed to have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep, because to God also belongs the last word.”

One of the telling verses in the rather spare account of the Nativity in the New Testament is the one where Luke takes time to inform us that “. . .Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” We also should do so. This Christmas, I want to commit time to quiet; sometimes in study and prayer, and sometimes just thinking.

* Chesterton here uses the cross symbol as a metaphor for Christianity. Many of the key tenets of our faith are seemingly opposed or appear to collide. Christ is the reconciliation of those things. An example might be that it is God’s will that we be with Him in Heaven, but our situation on Earth has made it impossible to do God’s will fully and perfectly, and therefore we are not worthy to be in His presence. The price Jesus paid ends the contradiction. Chesterton’s quote, from his book Orthodoxy:”But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.”