The Sound of Silence

"For God alone my soul in silence waits."
—Psalm 62:1a

A Salon.com article considers silence in interviewing George Prochnik, the author of, In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise. Salon writes,

For most Americans, silence is hard to find these days. Traffic, airplane noise and public transport fill most major cities. Cellphone conversations have taken over the parks and sidewalks, buzzing electronics have invaded our homes, and each store has its own carefully shaped "sonic environment."

Most of us accept these noises as a normal byproduct of our gadget-obsessed times, but in his new book, argues that this barrage of noise is more than just a nuisance; it poses a real threat to our cardiovascular system and mental health, our ability to concentrate, and, perhaps most dangerous of all, it turns our political discourse into a shrill barrage.

The full interview is here: In Pursuit of Silence.

Noise seems omnipresent. Where and how do you find silence? What is its value?

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue
Pursuer of a post-Lent, Post-Easter silence

We need to find God,
and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness.
God is the friend of silence.
See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence;
see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...
We need silence to be able to touch souls.
—Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)

The Lamp of Love

Don’t think that love, to be true, has to be extraordinary. What is necessary is to continue to love. How does a lamp burn, if it is not by the continuous feeding of little drops of oil? When there is no oil, there is no light and the bridegroom will say: “I do not know you”.

Dear friends, what are our drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things from every day life: the joy, the generosity, the little good things, the humility and the patience. A simple thought for someone else. Our way to be silent, to listen, to forgive, to speak and to act. That are the real drops of oil that make our lamps burn vividly our whole life.

Don’t look for Jesus far away, He is not there. He is in you, take care of your lamp and you will see Him.

–Mother Teresa of Calcutta

For love itself

Without expectation, do something for love itself, not for what you may receive. Love in action is what gives us grace. We have been created for greater things—to love and to be loved.

Love is love—to love a person without any conditions, without any expectations. Small things, done in great love, bring joy and peace. To love, it is necessary to give. To give, it is necessary to be free from selfishness.

—Mother Teresa (1910-1997)

A Drop in the Ocean

We ourselves feel that what we are doing
is just a drop in the ocean.
But the ocean would be less
because of that missing drop.
—Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Smile

Some people came to Calcutta, and before leaving, they begged me: ‘Tell us something that will help us to live our lives better.’ And I said: ‘Smile at each other; smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other—it doesn’t matter who it is—and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.’

—Mother Teresa of Calcutta

What Kind of Leader Are You?

What Famous Leader Are You?
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Hmm...Despite the test results, I know that I'm no Mother Theresa. It makes me wonder why they connected the two of us. But I do gravitate toward these Mother Theresa quotes below. So maybe it's not that I'm like her, but that I wish I was:

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.

Now I have a lot to live up to today.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Nourish our lives

If we nourish our lives
with the Eucharist,
it will be easy for us
to see Christ
in that hungry one next door,
the one lying in the gutter,
that alcoholic man we shun,
our husband or our wife,
or our restless child.
For in them, we will recognize
the distressing disguises
of the poor:
Jesus in our midst.

—Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)

The Dark Night of Teresa

Teresa of Calcutta wrote to her spritual confidant the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, the following in September of 1979:

Jesus has a very special love for you.
As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great
that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear.
The quote along with others has recently been published, something Teresa herself did not want saying that if they were published the world would "think more of me—less of Jesus." But the path to sainthood involves the glare of publicity and a recent Time magazine cover story Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith is part of that path for Teresa of Calcutta. The problem is that Teresa's letters reveal her to have struggled with doubts in her faith.

Over at On Faith, the panelist are being asked of Mother Teresa's letters, "Does this make you think more or less of her? To what extent is doubt a part of religious faith?"

Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu writes we live by faith not by certainty writing

Mother Teresa wonderfully was no plaster cast saint. She has helped to affirm many who are passing through this period of desolation and dryness when God seems so remote. St Theresa of Avila after one such bout cried out in frustration to God, ’No wonder your friends are so few given how you treat them!’ My regard for Mother Teresa has been enhanced.

Theologian Martin Marty writes Mother Teresa and the Experience of Faith writes of a less than sunny experience of God's presence saying

The absence of the experience of God or the experience of God is a classic theme with which many can identify. I once wrote a whole book, "A Cry of Absence," taking off from writing by perhaps the most noted theologian in 20th century Catholicism. He wanted us to concentrate on a "wintry sort of spirituality," and not just market summery, sunny, everything-solved spirituality. Such wintry sorts are all over the Bible and the pages of Christian history.

And the Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church Wall Street, Jim Cooper writes without doubt, we don't grow saying

Doubt is the fertilizer of faith. We don’t grow without it. I would never presume that Mother Teresa’s faith was sealed with certainty. These thoughts of hers make her in my mind all the more human, and all the more essential a religious figure – one in a never-ending relationship with God. Doubt is in and of itself dialogue in that relationship.

All of the panel's responses are here Mother Teresa and doubt.

I have preached on a similar theme speaking of doubt as a sign of an active faith with the sermons:
From Doubt to Shalom,
The Presence of a Hidden God,
The Darkness of God, and perhaps most full in
The Faith that Lives in You.

So will Teresa of Calcutta be sainted? Without a doubt. And in the process her letters will come to give comfort to others rather than cause even more reason to doubt the God she served in the slums of Calcutta.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

May I See You Today

Dearest Lord, may I see You today
and every day in the person of Your sick,
and, while nursing them, minister unto You.
Though You hide Yourself behind the unattractive disguise
of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable,
may I still recognise You, and say,
‘Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve You.’

—Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)