Lost in prayer

Continuing on from the theme of my last post Soul Space, I am well on the way in my preparation for my dissertation on Silence.

This morning I decided to search the City of Durham for some silence.

My day started with my 'quiet' time in the coffee shop that doubles as my office! A gorgeous contemporary place fitted out with decor that makes it look positively space age!

I decided that this morning I would listen intently to what I could hear. I heard a constant drone of traffic outside rising and diminishing in a kind of symphonic swell of continuous noise. I noticed how surprisingly regular the clink of coffee cups hitting tables or saucers was. I heard the constant noise of the barristas as they went about their busy work constructing amazing coffees and loading plates with sweet culinary delights. There was the low din of conversation, the rustling of page turns from newspapers, the squeak of wet shoes on a laminate floor. There was the grating noise of wooden chairs being moved on the same laminate floor. I heard the flush of the toilets more than once. And finally that background music, piped in over the sound system. For some reason the owner had chosen a meatloaf album, Bat out of hell not really making for a peaceful ambience!

Noise, noise, noise!

Constant noise.

I'd never really noticed it that much before.

Spurred on by my findings, I ventured out into the street. The streets of the city were already thronged with people and it was only 9am. So the heady mixture of footsteps and chatter filled the air. The traffic was louder than in the coffee shop out here, buses and lorries, cars and vans and motorbikes too, one with that annoying thing they do by taking their silencers off and frighten people witless when they accelerate. More of that piped background music coming out of clothes shops. It started raining heavily while I was walking, and the heavy rain hitting the pavement made for a pretty loud noise that seemed to supersede everything else.

Relentless noise.

No silence.

I went directly to the Cathedral. Surely there was a silent space there?

As I entered the amazing building approximately 1000 years old normally I get an awe filled moment on entry to it, but today as I was on a specific quest to find some silence.

The first thing I noticed in the main space was the constant grind of chatter from the already increasing number of tourists who come to Durham daily. It sounded like a constant distant murmuring that blended into one doleful din. The constant clatter of various types of shoes including stilettos cracked of the hard stone floor. There was a guy working to fix something and was hammering away the sound from which reverberated around the massive space making it seem like people were hammering all over the building. I went outside to my favourite space in the whole ancient complex, the cloisters, the original cloisters from the community of Benedictine monks that once lived at the cathedral. The cloisters now more famed for it's use as a set in a few of the Harry Potter movies than the deeply spiritual thin place it has been for many people over the years. It was the most peaceful place I had been in so far this morning. The rain was coming down hard and fast. I sat and just listened. The first thing I noticed was that the rain made it's own noise, a very beautiful noise, but noise all the same. The footsteps of people walking around the cloister started fairly soon after I had sat down. The click of cameras, a mobile phone went off, a lady somehow turned her handbag over not realising she hadn't zipped it up causing everything, make up, keys, phone, to fall out on to the floor with an almighty clatter!

I decided to go to an area of the cathedral that has a sign asking people to be quiet. The shrine of St Cuthbert, the burial place of one of the great Celtic Saints that is the end point of pilgrims from all over the world who believe this dead guy still has some kind of anointing and can heal the sick alongside a wealth of other virtues. It is a very quiet space.

Or so I thought.

As I sat opposite his tomb, four tourists walked in. As true as I sit writing this blog, one of them started to sing, 'Give me the moonlight' and did a kind of tap dance thing right across the shrine. This caused her mates to start laughing. I have to admit it made me laugh too, I'm shocked at my irreverence sometimes! but the thing is there was no silence.

As I sat back in the main nave area of this great cathedral, I began to resign myself that wherever we go in this world even in the most quiet of places, you will never find absolute silence.

You can't get away from the noise. Even when we are asleep at the dead of night, or scale the most remote mountain, or sail out to the most deserted of islands, we still breathe!

Of course this type of silence The desert fathers and mothers would have seen as exterior silence.

They were more interested in finding interior silence.

Interior silence is that silent place we can come to inside our lives, the place that allows us to be at peace, where our Spirit connects with Gods Holy Spirit.

The peace which knows no understanding.

When you think about it, it is almost impossible to find total exterior peace in this world.

My mind zoomed in on a psalm.

Psalm 139

Especially verse 7: Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

You cannot get away from Gods presence.

How amazing is that thought.

He's in every single incident, adventure, mishap, trauma, tragedy, success, you name it? He's there!

And he's in the noise, and he's in the silence.

And because of that we can find interior silence.

Inner space.

I started to pray sitting in an empty pew towards the back of the huge God room.

Within a few moments I was lost in God, lost in the prayer, in the interior silence of my soul. A place that kind of blots out the world around you so you don't notice what's going on. I prayed about some stuff that I needed to pray about and when I had finished found that I was kneeling on the kneel rail attached to the back of the pew in front of me. As I looked up I became aware that a group of tourists were all staring at me as they walked slowly up the centre aisle.

For a second thoughts flooded in to my mind like, 'what do you look like kneeling there where everyone can see you, you look like a right fool!'

But I felt the Spirit of God gently speak into my heart that by demonstrating prayer I immediately had an impact on those looking.

Whatever they thought, it was a reminder that there is a God, that people believe in.

And I realised something else.

Interior silence is the place where we can be in the world but not of this world.

Where we allow God to use us in total connection to his will and purpose. It's probably how persecuted Christians throughout the ages have been able to stand up for Jesus in the face of the most terrifying situations. It's probably how the unsung and the sung heroes of the faith have been able to achieve devastating things for the kingdom in this dark world.

Because they have experienced interior silence in a world of exterior noise.

In the presence of God we can achieve astonishing things forever?

Too much noise in your life?

Seek the silent place, the thin place.

Not just the exterior silent place although the quieter the better I guess.

Seek it deep in your soul.