At the helm

The church is quiet this morning, as if I were the First Officer on a sailing ship in the middle of the night, manning the tiller while everyone else is asleep. This is accentuated by the fact that the town is also quiet due to the icy glaze on the pavement that keeps people safely on dry ground. It is something of a holy, pregnant moment, as if the building itself were waiting for something to happen. The phone will rip into the silence or the front door's distinct clack-hiss when the metal flap that keeps the wind from blowing through the crack between the double doors springs open and the weather-stripping slides over the tiled narthex.

But then the expectant waiting blankets this place again, as if the walls were bracing themselves for what is to come. Soon, the decks will be swarming with activity as sailors attend their specific duties to which they are trained. I can see each of them with my mind's eye, out of focus with the present. The words of a true smith come to mind:

There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a motionless player on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house -
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.

"Silence" by Billy Collins

A thought that woke me up this morning:
Preaching: A moment of transformation, bound together by the Holy Spirit, around the study, reading and proclamation of Holy Scripture.