I’m back. Andrew has done a great job of posting some stuff on the parables (and I will do the next one tomorrow) while I have been taking a bit of a break from blogging, reading and commenting. But now I am back!
We have had a great holiday in France in my blog absence … 
this was a deluxe outside BBQ and the view from our gite (holiday house). It was a great time to hang out the family, swim, read, sleep, think, pray (a bit), listen to music and talking books, explore French towns and markets, eat and drink, and see some friends.
This gite was up a mountain, about 900m high, in Voges region of France … a small village at the end of a treacherous road, miles from nowhere. And it was so quiet (when the nearest neighbours stopped mowing their huge meadow!). When all man made noise stopped, and the kids had gone to bed, and the Ipod was turned off … silence. Well actually it wasn’t silence so much as loads of crickets, wind in the trees, birds singing, and if you listened very carefully the sound of a stream a few hundred yards away at the bottom of the valley.
All these sounds were there all the time, but in the midst of the lawnmower, everyone talking, music, the very occasional car there was just too much noise to hear the other sounds …
… and when all the other things were “off”, it took me many moments to tune into the different sounds.
And isn’t that so like the still small voice of God? Drowned out by the crashing sounds of life around us. And even when they cease, it takes some time to tune into a different frequency.
How do you find silence? What helps you tune in?
Tags: Prayer, Listening to God, Holiday, France
Welcome back!
I always find holiday hard to do anything spiritual - i usally tune out and stay tuned out. I think more and more that’s why i appreciate the rhythm of church and the liturgical year - it lets me set by time and my tuning in by something with a regular pattern and flow, allows me to find pause to reconnect with God and others rather than with myself and my religion
Thanks paul … I appreciate hearing your experience. I wonder why you find holidays hard? Are you tired? Or out of a rythum and structure? Or away from community? I am intrigued…!
Do you have a daily / weekly rythum as well as the liturgical year rythum?
I have found holiday some the best times, but also some of the most disappointing times too! Often at the end of the day, as the sun sets, with a glass of wine in one hand, i am found a real stillness and peace with Jesus. But too, i often hope to do more when away on holiday and am disappointed with myself when i just flake out.
Kids have made me reasses my expectations of prayer and spiritual reading on holiday (actually all reading!).
i think it’s just the lack of structure that means i have no hooks for my regular spiritual disciplines - so for instance i get into a pattern of praying whilst i commute to work but on holiday that is gone.
I know i can pray at other times but somehow the randomness of the days away make it hard to fit it in… It makes me appreciate some of the regular patterns in my life that help my spiritual practices.
Altho it is also good to take a break as well
Good to have you back, glad you had a good holiday. I’ve been thinking about silence, and trying to build more times in to practice this. I have to find the right place in the house for short bursts. I need to get into the country or away on holiday. Do you think silence goes hand in hand with solitude? Can you have silence and be with others?
Thanks Duncan …
I have been practicing silence and stillness for over 5 years now … i have been living with “be still and now that i am God” all that time, but still feel a novice.
My inclination is that we don’t need to be alone or even in a quiet place to experience silence and stillness … I have found sometimes, that i can still myself internally even when there is a lot of noise around, but to be honest i find it very difficult, and it isn’t often that i manage. I think it is a discipline that has to learnt.
What do you think? or experince?
Sorry, wrong link there. Oops.
I have corrected your link … the trials of changing blogging platform eh?
I always need a holiday to get over a holiday.
This past week I have spent at my mum’s. She lives in the middle of no where surrounded by tall trees, which obscures any traveling sound.
I love spending time at my mum’s and listening to the sound of nature, hearing the trees swaying in the breeze, the rabbits jumping along the moss, the squerrels cracking nuts. I tend to zone out of reality when I’m there and cocoon myself into a bubble.
When I come home to my shoe box and the sound of traffic, people shouting in the distance and sirens, I sometimes find it hard to adjust back into reality. But I like reality, because it’s real and I want to be in the world, to be the salt of the earth.
I’m just a bit tired now from doing nothing all week. Do you know what I mean?