I had written these thoughts in July, and found them yesterday evening:
What I was thinking today while the conversation was swirling around me and over me was empty space. Rich and Rosie were talking about the use of silence in music and dance, but that is not a broad enough recognition of the usefulness and importance of silence. It is important not only in sound, but also in the visual world, in language, and in how God works. He sets the standard for our use of emptiness, of rest, of pause in the very first verses of His Word to us. He creates—and then he rests. He doesn’t continue on in a swirling torrent of creation. He stops and there is a lull. We consider the fullness better when there is a pause in which to do the considering. The Sabbath rest allows us to process the business—the busyness—of the week that has passed, and to prepare for the week ahead. Where would we be without this silence?
Again, in scripture, we receive these words: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Not, “Bustle around and know that I am God.” Not, “Pile on more and more and more and know that I am God.” Not even, “Share my word” or “Feed the hungry” or “Press on tirelessly” or “Apply yourself” or “Memorize my word.” Not “Read your Bible, and know that I am God.”
Be still.
It is only in this stillness that we are able to understand even a little of whom God is. Perhaps this is why so many dislike the work of Jackson Pollock. There is no stillness, no rest, and so all the layers and patterns run together for us and create a visual equivalent of white noise. No rest.
Conversely, there can be no movement, nothing happening. If God had only rested during that seven days, where would we be then? Looking at Rothko and his color fields, we see this lack of movement. There is nowhere for the eye to travel—there is no depth of experience, nothing to consider, to weigh, to break apart, to seek after. It is there, flat on the surface. Beautiful perhaps in color and texture, yet ultimately as meaningful as a lovely window shade hung on a blank wall in a room.
We hide behind both busyness and emptiness. We pretend in both ways that we know much. But the proof is in the silence, in the stillness. It takes a great deal of bravery to be silent. To leave a blank. To stop moving. To rest.
