Noise...and Listening in the Quiet

Gosh. There really is no such thing as coincidence. Tonight I wrote a long overdue e-mail to my prayer partner, a sister-in-Christ I spent the last Holy Week in the mountains with, who is blessed to actually LIVE in the air up there. I told her about the clarity of my communication with God in the quiet of the sleepy little town far removed from the chaos of the city, and how the noise of the metropolis - external and internal - has once again been increasingly disruptive in my spiritual life. A couple of hours later, I'm reading through another work of my old "pal" Peter Kreeft and I find something that uncannily echoes my present state of mind and train of thought:

"What happens when we just meander with nature for a while instead of making something happen? What happens when we forget clocks and obligations, and just watch waves, or stars, or clouds, or sunsets, or rivers? In my experience, at least two things almost always happen. One is natural, the other supernatural. The natural effect can be described as just an overall feeling of refreshment, like cool water in a desert, or a calm after a battle. The supernatural effect is that I can pray better, and want to pray more.

"I think the natural effect helps cause the supernatural effect. It fertilizes the soil. It's like psychoanalysis: it's not religion, but it can remove some of the obstacles to true religion, like addiction, or obsession, or paranoia, or depression. I can't pray well if I'm obsessed, and I can't pray well if I'm noisy inside. I think we are sometimes too quick to pray, too impatient with preliminaries. Every house painter knows you have to spend more time in preparation than in actual painting. And every gardener knows you have to spend more time preparing the garden than seeding it. I suspect the same is true of prayer today."

Freaky. And then he goes a step further and reveals himself to be even more of a kindred soul than I suspect he already is (I swear that if I could write as well as he does, these very words would pour right out of my heart): "Different things in nature will do this for different people. For me, it is the sea. Even though I get bored easily, I can very happily sit for an hour and watch the waves. I think there must be something God put into the sea to remind us of himself—an image of infinity and depth and power and mystery and dynamic activity all at once. When I use abstract concepts, even the best ones I can find, they just don't hold it—like an open hand trying to hold the water of a wave. It has to emerge from the experience itself. Like the storm from which God answered Job, it remains a mystery.

"But the 'bottom line,' the 'payoff,' is that I emerge from my hour with a lesson learned. Nature teaches me how to listen. How to listen to waves, and thus how to listen in general, and thus how to listen to God. This is an art I know we all need desperately. If we listened, to other people and to God, we would avoid most of our tragedies, wars, divorces, violence, drugs, broken relationships, pains. How can we have faith, hope, and love without listening? How can we enjoy heaven without enjoying listening? How can we be saved unless we learn to listen to God?" (Peter Kreeft, How The Sea Can Help You Pray)

Wow...man, all I can add to that is AMEN.