Quiet Your Busy Mind

Written at Spruce Run Camping Grounds on June 20th, 2008

How hard is it for us to just shut up and listen? (Not "shut up" rudely, mind you). We try to fill every hour of our waking day with activity, so that we are not idle or sometimes to have the effect of being popular or social. And to what avail? It is so difficult for us to find a kind moment when we can just sit (or stand, what have you) and LISTEN. We pray a lot, sometimes with too many words, but when are we silent so as to hear God speaking back to us? At retreats? Camping like I am as I write this? Stuck in an elevator? We live in a world where media is readily available at our fingertips, advertisements bombard us, iPods, cell phones, video games, all these distractions, culminating to just Noise and nothing else. If for any reason, you are reminded of the Nooma episode by the title of Noise, don't feel odd, so am I.

As I sit here, camping as it seems, I find that in one direction I have civilization- poles, a structure, a playground, swing set, a great many tents. In the other there is nothing more than trees and grass, lake and sky. The breeze on this side rushes off the waters towards me and chills me to the bone. And what is held on the civilized side? The worldly, I should say? Expectations. Burdens. Careers. Life as the world would have it. Life, death, and friends to deal with it all. I turn just 180° degrees about-face. I feel the rushing wind cooling me. There is nothing here but God's creations. It does not ask anything of me, does not demand to know me, needs no explanation. How can I live in a world which is in two parts? The man-made and what is created by God? This world filled to the brim with pleasures, sex, money, drugs, and yet sins all the same? Knowing that you cannot simply abandon the one for the other?

I was reading prior to writing this, in the book of Proverbs. Chapter 25, verse 27 reads, "It is not good to eat too much honey, nor is it honorable to search out matters that are too deep." What, then, is the purpose of having these two seemingly unrelated phrases in one sentence? Early on in the chapter more is said on the subject of honey. To eat just enough -too much and you'll vomit. Too much of a good thing and you'll get bitten! A very simple example that everyone knows and rues well, drugs, they give pleasure to the senses, but too much (or any to begin with) and you'll become addicted, you'll want more, and it's all downhill from there without God's saving grace. It is simple enough to comprehend, yet sadly, sometimes friends we know get pulled into its clutches. Likewise the verse goes for the bad things. A matter too deep? It reeks of gossip. Delve too deep into that and you'll find yourself trapped within it, surrounded.

What, then, is the solution? More time spent listening to the world God created. Not so much as an excuse to feign work, but to devote just that moment to Him. You can do that, right? Just a fraction, a tiny percentage of your daily grind, one better spent with Him than on the computer, idly talking nonsense, or just sleeping it all away? With this I hope you'll find it easier to know when to have self control in other matters. When doing one thing is enough for now, and even more cautionary on the 'bad' things. All things in good measure, as they say.

The world is ever changing, even nature does sometimes, but that shouldn't affect your time listening to God. Amen and Godspeed.