“There are few times in my week when I truly quiet my soul because in order to do so, my head, my hands, and my heart must also be still. My thoughts race a mile a minute and the only way to slow them down is not to stop them entirely, for the void will quickly fill itself with another quick paced idea, but to focus them in the stillness of a single word or phrase.
Last night at Broken Liturgy, we were invited to hear God as a whisper in the silence. John’s team moved us through several iterations of lyric-less but powerful musical movements, each ending with a refrain of 5 minutes of silence. As the music mixed various layers of white noise, piano, drum, base, and electric guitar, the screen visually refocused our thoughts to images of in between spaces in life each imprinted with the phrase “I AM HERE”; these were intended to remind us that God is speaking all the time and all around us if we just stop long enough to listen. In the sanctuary at St. Paul’s were three canvases representing the margin space in the pages of a book where reflections and notes often occur while reading. We were encouraged to write in this space the images and phrases we heard God speaking to us during this time of stillness stillness together.
We were a small crowd, 28 in all, but we were an eclectic mix of life paths. Homeless and pastors, Jewish and skeptics, all sitting together under one roof connecting silently with our Creator and hearing a voice of love in a whisper.”
– Jill
broken liturgy: 