Words and Wells.

I've been quiet for a long while. Not in real life, so much. Although there have been some days this late Spring and early Summer when I have just been quiet. Which makes people nervous. They don't know what to do when words aren't falling out of my mouth.

"Are you okay?" they ask.

"Yes," I tell them. "I'm just thinking. I just feel like being quiet."

I've been quiet for a long while -at least in terms of the blog. Which is okay. Because words are, I think, like water. Whatever it is in the heart that leads to the putting of words together is sort of like a well Sometimes the well may run low or even go dry. That happened one hot, dry Summer in North Carolina. The well nearly went dry. And we needed to let it replenish itself. Stop pumping so much out. So sometimes being quiet is a good thing. Because when you keep talking and writing even though the interior well is dry, the words that come out are generally flat and uninspiring. Lifeless.

So I've been quiet. And it's okay.

Interpreting the Silence..

We United Methodists are a friendly, chatty family. Even in worship. When we pastors invite people to greet the people around them, the members of our congregation jump up and its like a family reunion (without the watermelon seed spitting contest). The room just roars with conversation and laughter!

Even during the sermon there is a low-level "buzz" or hum in the congregation. Not that people are jawing away at one another, outloud. (Well, okay, there are some people who turn to their neighbors and just talk and talk and talk while the preaching is going on. But those verbal non-conformists are few.) But there is a hum in the room.

Every now and then, though, the rooms gets absolutely still. It's like people have stopped breathing.

Now, as a preacher you know people can get quiet because they have fallen into a deep sleep. The way the young man, Eutychus, falls asleep when Paul is preaching in Acts 20:9.

There are other times, though, when the people are absolutely still because the preacher has stepped into a place...a subject...that is so real to them they almost can't bear it. Sometimes people stop whispering to their neighbor, they stop scribbling out their shopping list, and sit absolutely still because they didn't think anyone else in the whole world knew how they were hurting...and apparently the preacher knows. Because she is talking about it as if she is very familiar with the territory of the parishioner's silent, desperate pain. "I didn't think anyone else knew about that," people think to themselves. "In fact...I have been trying to pretend my life, in that particular area, isn't torn wide open."

So you have to interpret the silence.

It is almost always surprising to me, as a preacher. We are working along, the room is humming, and then I make a statement and suddenly everyone is still. When that happens I -deep inside- lean back, and tell myself, "Okay...we have arrived. We're someplace important for these people I love." It's must be the way a deer feels when he walks out of the dense, shaded, undercover and finds himself unexpectedly standing in a open space in the woods. The air is still...the sunlight is bright...and nothing seems to be moving.

"The Lord is in his holy temple," Habakkuk 2:20 says. "Let all the earth be silent before him."

The silent spaces in worship, during the sermon, when the hum stops and people almost stop breathing? They are usually a surprise...unexpected. And they are almost always holy ground.

Sometimes Silence is Good.

After 13 years serving a congregation you get to a point where you don't have the energy to play church. You get real. You get honest.

This weekend was one of those days when we talked, in worship, about some real stuff.

You can tell when the message is getting close to the hearts of people, you can tell when you are shaking some of the foundations and assumptions of peoples' lives, because they get very, very quiet.

This weekend it was like people had stopped breathing.

We were talking about how determined Joseph and Mary were to love their son, and introduce him to the God who loves him with everything he has. They had their son circumcised and named on the 8th day after his birth. They took him all the way to Jerusalem 40 days after his birth for the Jewish ritual of purification. They took their son to synagogue every week. They told him the stories of the faith.

A look at attendance patterns in our Sunday school shows the children from our most active families are present about once every three weeks. So we talked about this. We talked about how parents fool themselves into thinking their children are getting a spiritual foundation when we are only around enough to give our children spiritual quicksand.

I challenged parents to make God a commitment -not an afterthought. I reminded them that if they are here now and then, their child is always going to feel like an outsider...a stranger. I spoke to those who are sort of on the fence about being here because they have heard of a better nursery or children's ministry or youth center or teaching ministry in another church down the road. I said what most pastors would say: "If your heart is somewhere else, then go! Don't stay on the fence, sort of here and sort of not, because you're not helping your children...our church...or the other place. Go! Be all in or all out...but make a decision!"

It was quiet.

Sometimes silence is good, I think.

The people attending the synagogue in Nazareth, when Jesus preached from the prophet Isaiah, tried to kill him. They didn't like what he was saying.

No one threw a shoe today. No crowd tried to throw me off the sledding hill at Oxbow Park.

It was just quiet.

And I think that is okay.