The Alphabet of Faith: N is for Noise

(An edited version of the message I delivered, through live streaming, for online church today.)

Many of us will be struggling with a lot of NOISE in our heads these days.

It’s safe to say, right now, these days, we’re being bombarded by information – news channels that we can’t help but tune into several times a day; articles and videos and memes in our Facebook feeds; emails from our friends and families.

There are a lot of people – reporters, writers, musicians, pastors, just to name a few – who are doing a lot of talking. Some of it’s helpful, some of it’s entertaining, some of it’s alarming, even enraging.

Some of us may be spending far too much time staring at a screen, absorbing far more information and images and sounds than ever before, listening to all sorts of different voices like never before.

And it’s not good for us. We may call it “staying informed” and “staying connected” but it’s simply not good for us – for our minds, for our bodies, for our spirits.

NOISE is the opposite of peace.

NOISE is the opposite of stillness.

NOISE is the opposite of silence.

We’ve come to believe we need to be hearing stuff all the time – music, news, people talking.

We spend a lot of time listening to other people, and thinking they are right, and that they know what they’re talking, and what they’re saying is what we should be doing,

and if we’re not doing it – we’re no good.

We believe we need other people to tell us what to do and how to do it.

But the truth is: there is only one voice we need to hear.

Our own voice.

Because that is the only voice that knows us.

We’ve become so accustomed to noise that we forget what quiet sounds like:

It sounds like our heartbeat.

It sounds like our breath.

It sounds like our voice.

We’ve become so accustomed to noise that we forget what quiet feels like:

It feels like our heartbeat.

It feels like our breath.

It feels like…home.

Where we are free, where we are safe, where we are who we really are.

Now that we have a computer that fits in our hands, when we can fill moments of stillness with a video, a game, a text, when we shove buds into our ears to keep out the world around us, we rarely get a chance to clear the noise from our heads.

We need to step away from the NOISE. Turn off the news, turn off the computer, turn off the chatter, and find stillness.

How do we know who we really are, and what we are really called to do, if we can’t be still – be quiet –– and listen for the gentle voice inside us longing to be heard?

“Silence is essential,” said Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam. “We need silence, just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us.”

I can illustrate this with a personal story:

I walk a lot, and I walk alone and without a phone. There is nothing in my ears but the sound of my feet stomping, my blood pumping, and my breath puffing.

This is how I work out most of my problems. It’s most helpful when writing, to get out and clear out all the thoughts jumbled in my head, then return with some thread of an idea untangled.

But a few months ago, as I was walking, something happened. I felt something at the same time I realized something.

It felt like the gentlest kind of ‘pop’ inside. Not something I felt physically, but something I felt spiritually. And I realized it was a seed germinating.

And I understood – not with my brain but with my heart - this was a seed that had been planted deep into our cold, clay soil when I first arrived here in Nova Scotia. It has been waiting for the right time…and something I’ve done has triggered it.

My feeling is it’s starting to grow.

And all I have to do – is to leave it alone.

It’s a feeling and a realization that is both scary and exciting. I don’t know what the seed is, I have no idea what plant is going to emerge

but

if I hadn’t been walking in silence, stomping along the old muddy road as usual, not really thinking about anything, just breathing and pondering and being in a state of mental and spiritual stillness… I wouldn’t have felt that pop or heard my heart explain it to me.

If we are surrounded by NOISE all the time, we can’t hear those small, quiet messages in our hearts; we can’t feel those mustard seeds of our spirit popping inside us; we can’t find the courage to trust in those messages, in those pops.

As Ellen DeGeneres once said, “Find out who you are and be that person. That’s what your soul was put on this earth to be. Find that truth, live that truth, and everything else will come.”

- Sara Jewell