Seized by Silence

I rushed out of the door, down the steps, and was hurrying to the car when I was stopped in my tracks. Something was different. Something had changed, and that change reached out and caught me...held me motionless until I saw what it was.

It was the silence that held me fast...a stillness like I had felt in the wilderness, stillness of ancient stone and star, oak and moss. There was a chill in the air. A cold sun was setting. The trees were still, as if held beyond movement.

It happened in my front yard...a moment, a message...I cannot say for sure. But for a few seconds I felt as if time had ceased and I stood at a still point -- watching, listening. Then a car passed. Voices broke the silence. A breeze stirred, and I was left with a puzzle. Was it an imaginative moment? An epiphenomena?...Something bubbling up out of collective experience? Or, perhaps a message, a reminder of how things are in God's stillness, deeper than fear, rooted in life itself. I knew it was time to pray.

Willard Spencer

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The Old Swimming Hole and Faith

Faith and the Old Swimming Hole

It held me up again. It always does. You just have to lift up and let go, and you find yourself borne up with little effort. It always feels great when the hazy fields shimmer with mid-summer heat, to swim in the cool water of the old swimmin' hole. But swimming is not only refreshing, it is an act of faith. It still amazes me to float and glide above the deep.

Can you imagine what it would be like if you had never seen anyone swim and someone tried to tell you about it? On the water? Impossible! Wood floats. Iron and people don't. First you'd have to learn to trust your teacher, then to try the water. You'd have to have a lot of faith before you took your feet off the bottom and trusted yourself to the water. What a joy that first swim would be.

I guess you know that religion is like that too. You find it's claims hard to believe. Impossible! Yet if you can trust The Teacher, try the water, and take your feet off the bottom you will find it holding you up. Faith is like that. When you are knee-deep in life, when the pressure shimmers like haze on the field, or when nothing is moving in your life and you find it torpid and still, take to the water, trusting the Lord, and you will find refreshment you had not imagined. O yes, and it will hold you up. It always will.

Willard Spencer

The Wounds of Light

The Wounds of Light

The shadow has power to cause a brave heart to cringe and waver. Darkness wields a terrible weapon! Jagged and poisoned, it leaves wounds which heal only with the strongest remedy. Yet there are wounds of wonder. Awe and joy can inflict a pain as tangible and often weightier than the devices of the dark lord.

One character in Tolkien's novel puts forth these words: "Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come (on the Quest) had I known the danger of light and joy." (Lord of the Rings, vol. 1, p. 490) This character, whose name was Gimli, had come to know goodness and purity in the life of a great person. To part from this revelation was painful. To take to the road again was as a cruel wound.

Light and joy can wound - but only if we seek to hold on to the shadow. Then healing love becomes judgment and pain. Such a wound should lead us to its own cure. Would you be healed? Seek then the light which cures the shadow. As a highland preacher once noted, "One shadow never yet banished another, for this is the business of sunshine."
Willard Spencer