A Still Small Voice

There is a voice in my head that I believe is the voice of God. (See my previous two posts: The Voiceof God and Not My Voice.) One of the reasons I believe that it’s God’s voice and not my own internal monologue is that I can’t control it. I can’t will it to tell me something I want to know. I can’t even will it to speak to me at all.

Sometimes when I turn to the voice there is only silence. Sometimes it speaks in short answers. Sometimes it doesn’t speak at all but it communicates a sense, a direction, or an emotion I was unaware of. Sometimes the presence behind the voice gets in the way like a roadblock; a brick wall that needs to be climbed or circumnavigated. But it doesn’t beg for attention. It doesn’t barge into my day or my thoughts with directions or imperatives. Sometimes it calls my name when I am anxious to remind me that it is there. But mostly it waits for me to listen.

I’m not very good at listening. I think I would hear the voice a lot more if I listened regularly. But I don’t do that.

Sometimes I get into the habit of listening. I sit quietly and meditate. I try to get the non-stop monologue of my own thoughts to shut up. But it’s hard. I wish I could say that my mind was preoccupied with grand thoughts and theological meditations but most of the time I’m worried about having enough time to get a task finished or wondering how someone will respond to the work I've already done. I’m constantly planning what I will do next and wondering about whether or not I’m doing a good job. I spend time creating conversations in my head that justify what I’ve done or what I will do in an effort to be at peace with myself.

I once read that Buddhists call this kind of thinking “monkey mind.” It’s that non-stop activity of the brain that jumps around from thought to thought and keeps us distracted and anxious. In meditative practice I’ve learned that my mind begins to wander in less time than it takes to breathe in and out six times. After a few moments I realize that my mind has raced through a slalom course of thoughts tied one to another by only the thinnest of threads. While my body may be still my mind certainly is not.

The ironic part of all of this is that I spend time struggling to be at peace within myself when the voice brings the peace I long for. And at the same time I’m afraid that if people knew about this voice that I believe is God, they would think I’m crazy. (And perhaps I am for publishing this bit of self-revelation on a blog.)

So I have this dilemma. If I trust this still, small voice and receive the peace that it gives me, I worry that I’m slowly going insane. If I don’t acknowledge this voice as the voice of God I am less worried about being committed to the special wing at the hospital where the elevators don’t stop and you need to be buzzed in when you visit. But then I don’t receive the real peace that I so desperately want.

There is a story in the Bible about a prophet named Elijah (1 Kings 18 & 19). In a tense showdown with the prophets of Baal, (the preferred god of the reigning Queen) Elijah ended up humiliating and killing hundreds of them. He was running through the wilderness to save his life and wondering where his own God was when an angel told him to go to a specific mountain. After spending the night in a cave on the top of the mountain the voice of God asked why Elijah was there. When Elijah replied that he needed to experience God’s presence to relieve his fear and anxiety the voice told him to stand at the entrance to the cave because the presence of the Lord was about to pass by.

Elijah stood at the entrance to the cave and a strong wind blew so hard that it split rocks. But, the story goes, the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind was an earthquake that shook the mountain but the Lord was not in the earthquake either. Then there was a fire but the Lord was not in the fire. Then after the fire came a still, small voice; a whisper. And Elijah knew he was in the presence of God.

The still, small voice. So natural yet so foreign. So intimate yet so completely other. Accessible and inaccessible at the same time. There and not there. Bringing peace and hope for a new day.

This sounds a lot like the God described in the Bible.