I hear a voice I had not known:

“I relieved your shoulder of the burden;
your hands were freed from the basket.
In distress you called, and I rescued you;
I answered you in the secret place of thunder….
I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it….

~Psalm 81:5b-7a; 10 NRSV

Life has a pace that should not be violated.

I invariably come back from my not-so-frequent-as-they-used-to-be retreats with a sense that the pace of life has gotten out of control.  Life with God is characterized by a kind of rhythm, a way of relating to Him that’s made up of a delightful blend of listening and responding.  This rhythm is not often mirrored in my own day-to-day existence.  At least it doesn’t feel that way; it feels more like dancing with someone who’s listening to a different song.  But I always leave those retreats resolved to reconcile my steps to His.

A number of common retreat images reinforce this notion of pace, of rhythm, for me: the steam rising over a cup of coffee, autumn leaves floating to the ground, snowflakes falling from winter skies, ocean waves washing onto the shore, clouds brushing across the blue dome of summer, even train whistles and ticking clocks.

All these simple beauties exist at a certain pace, by which I don’t mean “speed” at all.  They simply are, they just happen, with no sense of hurry (sure, there are extremes of wind, snow and weather of all sorts, but these are just that—extremes, not the norm).

I’m struck this morning by how much of life is dictated to us.  Or, if you prefer, how little of life seems to be dictated by us.  We are more often driven, like horses reined and whipped.  True, there will be seasons of life (such as parenting, schooling, or phases of a career) during which, for a time, we are indeed driven.  But those are in fact seasons and should not constitute the norm of day to day existence.  They should not even be the norm in parenting or schooling or career.  And the seasons will vary in length: a few years, or weeks, or even merely days.  Being attentive to these seasons is one of the arts of living life well.

A necessary balance is required here, but not so much keeping the weight exactly even on the passivity vs. activity scales, but more on the patient-waiting vs. willing-obedience scales.  The good life requires discernment, the art, beauty, and wisdom of which can be seen most clearly, I think, in Ecclesiastes 3:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.”

I quote this at length for its slow, quiet beauty.  Simply to read this is to enter into that rhythm, that pace, I have been speaking of.  But as I was sharing with my high school students this past week, the writer here is saying far more than just “Life consists of a whole variety of things that come and go in their time.”  Instead, the richness of this passage consists in the recognition that each of these seasons may be entered into at any time, but that doing so well requires wisdom.  Hence, in the course of a disagreement with a colleague or a child, “Is this a time for silence, or for speaking?”  Or when going through a deceased parent’s belongings, “Is this a time to mourn or to dance?”  And so, in your own life today, is this a time for war or for peace? to seek or to lose? to break down or to build up?  Who among us has the wisdom to know which of these is called for at any given time?  Very few, I think, and none who fail to at least reflect upon the gut-level reactions that come first to mind.  This kind of wisdom is rooted in humility and comes only to those who offer quiet attention to the small and (only apparently) insignificant things.

In the stillness, “I hear a voice I had not known.”  Stillness is not so much the absence of motion, but a state of patient attentiveness.  And if we consent to this patient attentiveness, we can find a voice carried to us on the rising steam, the falling leaves, the sounding waves, and the airy clouds.  Hidden “behind” these is the place we meet with God, the secret place of thunder.