I'm a seminarian now

Based on actual conversations between real people:

Mere Breath and Herding the Wind

I read Ecclesiastes today, and I recently started re-watching the HBO television series Six Feet Under. There's a similar kind of wisdom at work in both places.

No matter who we are--rich or poor, righteous or wicked, wise or foolish (and all of us are all of these, I think)--we shall all meet the same fate.  All human enterprise and undertakings are like herding the wind, and, in the end, it all passes as mere breath. But this merest of breaths exhaled, that ephemeral dewy moment that soon turns to vapor, how much it contains!

And the riddle is this: how can all that we know be so full and yet so empty?  And how can this elegant dance we do on the edge be all that there is? And why do we think we need anything more?

What We've Given Up and What We're Gaining

I was thinking about the various things my classmates have given up in order to complete this rigorous MDiv program, and I came up with this poem:

Sacrifice and Sacred Presence

We have lost lovers, left mystified friends behind,

given up time with family, seen our own time shrink to nothing,

felt wearier than weary, thrown away careers,

increased our indebtedness a hundredfold—

and sacrificed more things than these.

We have given up some layers of protected privilege,

let go of the outer garments of comfort that hid us

from what is real and what is really calling us.

We hear it now at the bedsides of the sick and dying;

we hear it in the soup kitchens, in the prisons,

the homeless shelters, the community meetings.

We hear it in the rituals that mark the Sabbath

and births and deaths and weddings;

and we’ve begun to share it with others—

at first cautiously and then with more confidence,

more openness, more authenticity.

This presence that draws us in and draws us out

and leads us on; this moment; this shimmer

that seems to disappear just as we turn to gaze at it

is our pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness.

Sweet Silence

Since starting divinity school, my already busy day-to-day life has become an even more rigorous and demanding experience. There’s no getting around the work that must be completed and the accompanying whirlwind of activities in which I find myself.  Even the reflection that I do is structured and purposeful—a means to an end.

And all of that activity is good.  But it’s also very noisy.  Whether it’s external noise or internal chatter, I have found that moments of real silence are increasingly hard to come by.

And it is for this reason that, for 36 hours this past weekend, I retreated to a cabin in the middle of the woods, soaking in the silence of the natural world.  People are such loud creatures, and most of the noise we make is a by-product of some other activity—usually trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

I believe that we get so lost in the noise that it is almost impossible for us to recognize the presence of anything truly important.

Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton wrote, “Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything.”  In other words, silence allows us to be aware of a presence that we cannot otherwise perceive.  When this presence is lost, I believe we have lost our center.

The silence of the woods allowed me to be in the presence of a large oak tree towering over the cabin, shedding leaves in the afternoon sunlight, recycling itself and transforming light to earth and earth to light.

If we are to be witnesses to the presence of something beyond the chatter of our minds and roar of the highway, I commend to you, one and all, silence.  Find it where you can, as often as you can; live in it and learn from it.

All the books in the world, all the lectures, all the busy doing of our lives will get us only so far. The quiet of the silent oak is by far the greatest teacher I have recently encountered.