Looking Beyond the Ripples and Falls

“{People} see God in the ripple but not in the miles of still water. Of all the two-thousand miles that the St. Lawrence flows — pilgrims go only to Niagara.”

     ——- Henry David Thoreau 

The sun is rising on a day in which nothing much is planned.  

The calendar is empty.

There are no errands to run.

No packages are anticipated in the mail.

Leftovers will satisfy the needs of all three meals.

At zero degrees, it’s too cold for outdoor projects.

The chickens are fed.

The dogs are snoozing on the sofa.

The laundry is done.

The dishes are washed.

The bills are paid.

It’s quiet — a “still water” kind of day.  

With a sheepish smile I think of how much of my life would have considered such a day a waste of good opportunity.  “Surely,” I would have told myself, “the responsible thing to do is figure out how to make some dominoes fall, some mountains move, some towers get built.”  You know, make something happen....  
     Light a fire.  
          Ring a bell.  
               Draw a sword.

And God knows there is plenty to do — in the world, and around the house.  It doesn't take much imagination to name them.  They are glaring...jarring...clamorous.  Tackling some of them -- checking a few off the list -- in the course of this "empty" space of time certainly wouldn’t be bad.

But busy, it wouldn’t automatically be helpful.  As Thoreau observes, Niagara Falls only occupies one small fraction of the River.   What else might there be upstream?  Or downstream?

It’s easy to hear when the music is loud.  What is to be heard inside the sounds of silence?

Quite familiar  -- and in some ways more comfortable -- with Elijah's experience at the mouth of the cave, hair parted by the great wind, teeth rattled by earthquakes and eyebrows singed by nearing fires...though only occasionally experiencing divinity within them, I will spend this day on different, more muted terms.

I’m rather determined this day to make a pilgrimage to the stillness -- to listen into the "sound of sheer silence" that Elijah described; to attend to the "still small voice" -- rather than the roaring attractions and the ripples that are conspicuously and unusually absent from the schedule, trusting in the holy wonder to be discerned in quiet hours...miles removed from the Falls.