This month’s moment is by Ville Kavilo, Finnish Lutheran Pastor, Photographer and Entrepreneur.
“Pappa, de e ganska tyst här.”
“Jo, det är det. Hur känns det för dig?”
“Bra.”
Three-year-old after siblings have fallen asleep: “Daddy, it’s pretty quiet in here.”
Me, from a chair outside his room: “Yes, so it is. How does it feel?”
A pause for reflection: “It feels good.”
One of the more devastating aspects of constant noise is its ability to unmoor the soul. Not just the soul of an individual, but of a continent. The constant input without a clear center unmoors us from the realities from which we draw life. Surrounded by a continual stream of information, entertainment, opinions, and demands, we drift further from any fixed point of reference.
When seeking to be human in the way of Jesus, we are constantly seeking to root ourselves in the reality of the Kingdom Among Us. We shoot roots into the soil of heaven to find our nourishment and center. That becomes the Archimedean point from which the Spirit moves our inner world. Constant noise unmoors us, uproots our souls from its natural environment in our Fathers kingdom. Simone Weil, in her 1943 book The Need for Roots, wrote: "to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
A society, and continent, that seems to be largely at drift, unmoored and uprooted from the dock and soil that would nourish it, needs to find a way back to the center. One of the ways back, throughout the history of Gods people, seem to be experiments in silence, in shutting out noise and distractions. In this world of constant noise, Jesus invites us into quiet spaces with the Father, where the soul finds its mooring and puts down roots deeper in the Kingdom Among Us.