Silencing the Noise, or, Now That I’ve Stopped Listening to Those Voices In My Head

A Short, Unrelated Preface
First, seeing as this is my first blog post in three months, I believe some clarifications may be in order:

- Although I alluded to another post about job-related issues, and despite spending several days writing what was, in its unfinished form, a rather bulky attempt at a more substantial discussion of my thoughts about those issues, I regret to say that the publishing of that post has been indefinitely suspended, until such a time as I: a) tie together all the divergent thought-threads and can bring to discussion an integrated and intelligible synthesis of ideas, b) receive such an overwhelming display of popular demand that I am forced to either bite the bullet and produce something, or risk alienating my fan base to the point of having to start this whole thing over from scratch, or c) square myself with the reality that I can’t completely exhaust all the possibilities related to the subject, and having been thus squared, decide to pick up the discussion again with slightly less ambitious expectations.  I’m thinking it will probably be b).

- By “short,” as in, “A Short, Unrelated Preface,” I intend a meaning which assumes more of an intuitively grasped, transformative journey than a rationally processed, informative event.  To clarify: while this preface may take, admittedly, a “longer” period of time to read than the average preface that you might normally tend to read, I would rather draw your attention to the fact that it will require of you a relatively minor degree of psycho-spiritual adaptation in order to awaken (so to speak) to the reality embodied within these very words.

I Love to Think…
To get to what I wanted to say about noise, I first need to explain to you that I love thinking.  For those of you to whom this is a surprise, I’ll simply say that we need to talk, and a great way for that to happen is for you to take me to lunch sometime.  Anyway, seriously – I usually spend hours a day “lost” in my own thoughts.  You might could say that for much of my life I’ve been content to be my own best friend.  While there are some obvious issues related to this (one of which is the point of this whole post), I wonder if some of you may be able to identify with me when I say that I don’t mind being alone because it gives me time to think about the things I like thinking about.

…Maybe Too Much
In recent weeks I have been discovering that there is a point to be reached where I am thinking too much, or allowing my mind to wander at times when it should be focused on the task at hand.  And it isn’t just that I realized in a shameful sort of way that I was overly detached from the life going on around me: more than that, it got to the point (both recently and at several points in my last full-time job) where I could hardly stop my mind from racing whenever I was idle, or doing something I didn’t like, or felt wronged in some way by someone or some people.  Or at other times I would pick up a book to read to study for a test I’m taking in a couple of weeks, and before I was out of the preface my mind had already raced through a dizzying array of questions about the aim of the book (Where is this headed?  How do I deal with these underlying values and goals?  Is this really representative of this particular sub-culture?  If I knew more about x,y, and z then I might could come up with a different approach… and so on).  How am I supposed to deal with situations like these?  (And who has the time, patience, and financial stability to search for answers to those questions?)  It seems that something I love has become something more, something too much more.  Sometimes we call this indulgence.  You could also probably call it idolatry.  Lately, I’ve come to recognize it as noise.

Now For a Little Culture-Bashing
No, I’m not really going to do any “bashing” – but as an American, and especially since my own experience is indicative of a larger reality, I do want to speak to a cultural phenomenon which bombards our senses on a daily basis: noise.  It comes in many forms:
-Background music – whether in stores, cars, offices, classrooms or homes, we love to have something playing while doing something else (by the way, I’m not identifying any particular genre of music as “noise”).  Some might prefer to have a TV on instead.

-Advertisements – any time or place is the right time or place to stick on a brand name, place a poster or billboard, put in a plug for something… you get the idea.

-Snacks – I certainly enjoy my coffee, and honestly may not go for any point in the day more than an hour or two without eating something.  Many times these are consumed concurrently with a monotonous task, as a way of “taking the edge off.”  Some people might use cigarettes, alcohol or drugs in a similar way.  These are all acts of self-medicating (owing to a Ross King song called “Everybody Medicates” for the idea).

The list could go on, and you could probably add things like fidgeting, messy rooms, quoting lines from movies and people just randomly trying to be funny to the mix.  You may experience something else as noise in your daily grind.  Whatever it is, our consumer culture is highly concerned with creating an atmosphere of noise and, accordingly, a vast array of products to suit your every acquired (and artificially developed) taste.  I wonder, though, whether we’re doing the consuming, or rather being consumed.

But if I discern the Gospel correctly, we ought to make great efforts to:
-Consume less, give more (idea roughly owing to Chris White)
-Think about and meditate on more truth
-Practice complete silence before the Lord (as in, “Be still and know that I am God,” the one who “utters his voice, [and] the earth melts” – whoa.)
-Ask God that he can be what fills you, his work can be your food, his can be the voice you hear, he can fill the voids and heal the wounds you try to medicate, his heavenly music can stir your soul and move you towards greater loves than you thought yourself capable of

Peace and Quiet
I have come to treasure these more lately, even as I admit they are more slippery than they appear to be on the surface.  And they are not goals in themselves, but means for helping me listen for God’s voice, which as Christian tradition tells me, is a “still, small” one.  Without hearing it, the story of my life could come to be summarized by the tragic line, “Oh!  I missed it.”