If you happened to walk into our dining hall on any day of the week, you would hear it before you would see it. It's not surprising when you have nearly one hundred and fifty children all in the one room, after three hours of studying Maths and English in some form, that they might just want to let off a bit of steam. Unfortunately they haven't quite grasped the concept that if everyone tries to talk at the same time, then it's hard to decipher anything that is said. They think the only solution is to try and talk more loudly than their neighbour who obviously has the same brainwave at the same time, so the noise level creeps up rather quickly, until a bang of the cook's big spoon returns the decibel reading to normality. But it's never totally quiet and I don't think you could expect it to be. Strangely though, I can stand in the hall and not hear the noise at all some days because in truth, it's not about the noise, but about where your mind is. My own recollections of dinner time in the dining hall around the start of my teenage years was one of absolute silence, save for the noise of metal on crockery. It was in general keeping with the rigid discipline rules of the school whose policy on educating children was, to quote a famous Irish author, the carrot and stick method, but without the carrot.I was drawn to the whole subject of quietness today by several things. First, we spent some of the daylight working hours in school, rearranging books and furniture that had been move to allow for a repaint. The place was so quiet all day with the children not due back for several weeks. It made me almost think how great being a teacher could be of there were no pupils, but it's their noisy exuberance and enthusiasm that makes the job worthwhile sometimes.
Then when I logged on to youngest son's blog tonight that he is writing during his year in Ecuador, working with a church, I was intrigued how he described his present life and his mind as 'noisy' because of the busy nature of his work, the people he is meeting , the different language and culture and of course all the thoughts, plans, ideas and feelings that are constantly swimming about in his head. And you know I understood exactly what he was talking about, because what he really needed was some quality time to himself, not just for the sake of it , but to be able to mediate on God and to feel His peace infuse his life. It reminded me of Job who said 'I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.' It took me back to many times I can remember when I would seek a 'place of peace' just to be alone with my thoughts and with God. Sometimes it was just a walk up the lane or by the riverbank, maybe a drive in the car, sitting in the dark in the lounge, mowing the lawn and sometimes, it was in the middle of a crowd where I was just anonymous and could walk with my own thoughts. I guess that's where I am in the dining hall occasionally. Then tonight, I was reading the local paper and happened to notice a remark from our only lady Prime Minster to date, who said 'We have a great many people on our national stage who are great communicators but they have nothing whatever to communicate.' I think what she really meant was 'maybe they should keep quiet.' Or maybe it's another way of phrasing that old proverb, 'empty vessels make the most sound.'
Ah, quietness. It plays such an important part in our spiritual lives too. The write of Lamentations says 'it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.' And Zephaniah records 'The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.' Even when Jesus cast demons out of people, His first words were to command the demon to 'be quiet.' And maybe the writer of Margaret Thatcher was not one hundred miles away from the writer of Ecclesiastes who wrote 'The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools.' We used to sing a hymn many years ago, the first line of which was 'there is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.' The Psalmist reminds me that 'He leads me beside quiet waters.' So maybe today we need to start our desire to grow deeper with God by being a little quieter. After all, if we're not, we mightn't hear that gentle whisper.
