a thin silence

And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. (1 Kings 19:11-12 ESV)

Qol demamah daqah.

“The sound of a low whisper.”

The note in the ESV reminded me that the Hebrew expression could literally be translated “a sound, a thin silence.”

The thought immediately took me to that Celtic expression of “thin places” – places where the border between heaven and earth become very thin, almost transparent. For me it well captures what a real “sacrament” is, those ordinary, earthy intersections where heaven and earth meet and God is encountered – like Moses and his burning bush, Jacob and his stone pillow, or like Elijah and his cave. It was in the cave that Elijah found the thin place he desperately needed – a thin place of thin silence.

Watching his Mt. Carmel experience, I wager most of us would have given our eye-teeth to have been there, to see that kind of 3D IMAX experience in one of the God encounters to end all God-encounters. Nothing very thin about it, actually. Just loud and booming. And loud and booming is good! I like IMAX (3D optional). Mt. Carmel takes me to the booming of Psalm 29…

The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD, over many waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.
The voice of the LORD breaks the cedars;
the LORD breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf,
and Sirion like a young wild ox.
The voice of the LORD flashes forth flames of fire.
The voice of the LORD shakes the wilderness;
the LORD shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.

Who hasn’t been called to worship by a raging thunderstorm (or desperate prayer!)? The trouble was that when the fireworks of Mt. Carmel were over and done and the rain was pouring down, Elijah quite literally ran into the unmoved wall of Jezebel and realized that nothing in the world had really changed after all. He thought it was the final scene, but it was evidently only a very impressive preview.

One forty day journey into the desert later, in the cave, he is treated to the same powerful preview. But it’s only noise now. Loud, impressive, booming. Noise. But then the sound of a thin silence turns the cave into a sanctuary in which he encounters God – an encounter that would launch him into the remainder of his journey.

Funny how uncomfortable silence can make us. We have worship sets, but only moments of silence. We thrive on loud and noisy displays, seemingly thinking like the prophets of Baal that God is hard of hearing or that he shares our affinity for loud, for filling up space with impressive incessant sounds. And while heaven indeed does crank it up so much that the foundations of the threshhold are shaken, even in heaven there is silence for half an hour. Try that if you dare.

It all takes me to what is for me a classic text, a constantly beckoning invitation in Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God.” “Being still” is not just stopping, it is sinking down, letting go, relaxing in the deepest sense; it is to stop fighting and resisting and pushing and holding yourself up, and in the midst of the chaos described in Psalm 46 – the chaos of all around us and in us, and even the tumult of something as awesome as Carmel – in the midst of all allowing yourself to sink down, to lean heavily into quiet and finding your own place of thin silence, to rehear his unforced rhythms of grace.

And in that place to realign, reconnect, reinvigorate, relaunch.