What Are You Doing Here, Tom?

Only been at it a day, but this business of awaiting the Deity's appearance in the Silence is not coming as easy for me as it was for the prophet in the lesson for next Sunday (1st Kings 19, NRSV), “... a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle.”

The KJV doesn’t say "a sound of sheer silence," it says classically and memorably "a still, small voice." The Orthodox Jewish Bible says "a kol demamah dakkah (a quiet, gentle voice)." That quiet, gentle, still, small voice I might hear even without hearing aids, but -- a sound of sheer silence? don’t think so. As it turns out, the sound of sheer silence in this Jesuit place is the sound of birds chirping.

What are you doing here, Tom, you're not Roman Catholic?

Present, waiting to hear God.
Waiting for God.

Actually, checking the Hebrew scripture for 1 Kings 19 shows that Elijah was not waiting, listening for Elohim, God, but for יְהוָה which is YHWH, Adonai, Hashem, the Lord, which says that this is from the mind and hand of the J-Writer --

-- which wanders down the side trail into the briar patch, distracting from what Tom+ is here to do, and which was the object of my directed Saturday prayer, "The particular event of this day that I most want healed is ..." and I inserted "distraction."

Go to silence, go directly to silence, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

Unlike my last dorm room 55 years ago, which itself was fifty years old at the time and never heard the word air condition, Friday night this a/c dorm room was freezing. Saturday night, freezing again so cranked a window open.

What are you doing here, Tom? Scratching mosquito bites.

Thus far then here on Silent Retreat, Elijah's sound of sheer silence is for me birds chirping and mosquitos humming.

What are you doing here, Tom?

Waiting for God.

Walking, scratching, listening, waiting.

Listening hopefully if not expectantly for the sound of sheer silence.

TW+