One of those things that my siblings and I joke about quite often is that when we were growing up, we never had toys that made noise — mechanical or battery-powered.
Or actually — the truth of the matter — we never had toys that made noise… and that still made noise after a month or two. Somehow, mysteriously, the noise-making component (and only that component) would cease functioning around that time. If mechanical, the air bladder would somehow rupture; if electrical, the speaker would stop working. In all other ways our toys would work just fine — only now they were silent.
As one of the older siblings, I had a longer span of time to make observations about this phenomenon. And as I observed the toys of my younger siblings failing in these strikingly similar patterns, I began to figure out what was going on: sabotage.
You had probably already figured it out. You are, after all, far more clever than an eight year old. And some of you are parents yourselves, knowing the toll that can be wrought by the incessant noise of unending devices without volume controls. As a parent now, I have found the temptation almost too great to resist at times. Thankfully, we simply “run out of batteries” more often than you might think.
Now that the Agapè school is out for the summer, the William Wallace Education Building is strangely quiet. That normal burble of activity and play and problem and comfort and excitement is absent, and most of the time it is just Robyn, myself, and my tinnitus. And all that quiet has me thinking about noise.
It has been another noisy week in the world in which we live. There have been terrible revelations, lies and deflections, and the ongoing grind of people being ground down by a social and economic machine built to do just that. Unjust wars continue unending. Political scandals multiply like rabbits. And the White House looks like they are getting ready to film a remake of “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.”
Now I don’t know the science behind it, but I’m convinced that noise has a kind of mass. It moves like water: crashing against us in waves, building against our resistance, at times coming with such force as to completely overwhelm us. Like a tsunami, it can completely move our house from its foundation; and like a flood, it can lead to us rotting from within.
The antidote to the noise outside us is quiet within us. And perhaps rather than an “antidote” this is more of a temporary inoculation — one we must repeat over and over again in order for it to maintain its effectiveness against exposure.
What do you do that helps you find quiet inside yourself? What challenges that quiet? Would you be interested in learning about or trying out specific practices that others have found helpful? Would you like to share about how you stay grounded in these times of swelling seas?
I’d love to talk more with you about any of this, or anything else on your mind.
Remember, we’re all in this together.
Pastor Michael