On the Answer That God Gives

05/19/2006 7:27 AM – 7:55 AM

The Answer of God is Silence. There are no varying degrees, only varying degrees to which we listen. The Answer that God gives is absolute and full. What should I do with my life? What color slacks should I wear to my interview? Could you please make it not rain? Can you give me this day my daily bread? Why do children starve to death? How could you let that happen to me when I was just a kid? Did I do something wrong before I was even born?

We close the windows and the doors. We stop up our ears. But we can still hear some noise that filters in. The sound of the breath. The beat of the heart. So we calm ourselves and focus on the breath and listen to the sound it makes. We listen until we can no longer hear it. We approach the Answer of God, but we can never quite get there. There’s still too much noise. This noise doesn’t come from outside, though. It comes from our mind. So we focus on the breath and the thoughts grow less and less. But we never quite get to the Answer. We approach it. We can feel it somehow creeping into our bones, but we can never quite grasp it.

Can we draw any conclusions from the Answer? Does the Silence tell us anything about the One that speaks It? No. If you draw some conclusion from the Answer, you weren’t listening to it. This is your face before your grandparents were born. This is the sound of one hand clapping. This is the Answer to all of the vain days of all of your vain life. We are not beings of Silence. Even when we were primordial ectoplasm, floating in a Pangeaic tidepool, we were still of the substance of noise. Even the gift of the ultimate resource did not teach us Silence, but it did let us know that it was there. Then the Silence was made flesh, and dwelt among us, but we did not comprehend Him. We pestered him for answers in words, but words cannot capture Silence. They can, when used well, point us to it, but they are not the Silence. The finger that points to the moon is not the moon. But it’s time to shower and dress and get ready for work. Don’t stop asking God your questions, but for God’s sake, listen to His Answer. Listen to it. Just listen, O Spikey Jim. Wherever you are. Remember it. Remember that there is nothing better.