Silence is Golden

Silence is Golden is a song that I used to sing in the sixties when I played the record album by The Fours Seasons. Now it still play it but on a CD.

It brings to mind when I was in high school in my senior class, our English teacher Mr. McGrail got into a debate about where thought comes from. I don't even remember why I asked that question and it is almost a half century ago. My point was that I felt thought was influenced. I wondered where the information came from of people who talked about twenty leagues under the sea, or a man on the moon, or how Nostradamus could predict or write about events that had not happened. I was working with a lady at a laundry mat named Mary, who had told me that she had seen the date of Pearl Harbor on a cellar wall written in red ink long before the war. I was also curious about people who could tell fortunes which was popular at that time. My answer was confirmed today.
Today, Saturday, March 7, 2009, we had a parish retreat with Dr. Albert Rossi, Adjunct Professor of Pastoral Theology at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary which was held at St. Michael's Church. He did not encourage thinking. Instead he recommended silence. He related bible passages that tells us that God wants us to listen in silence. "Be Silent and Know I am God." How do we know what God wants unless we listen to Him, a long time problem according to Dr. Albert, evident throughout the Old Testament. Then he said that most thoughts are negative. That being the case, they do not come from God. If not from God, then you know from who. We have our guardian angel surrounding us and then the unseen, who are not obedient to God.

The answer is simple. Our thoughts are influenced. The truth is that we are here to worship our God and serve Him. He will tell us how if we listen.

I am not good at listening. I need to work at it. Discerning God's will for me. He has done all the work by His precious cross for me already. I just need to be totally His because He has purchased me by His blood and Resurrection. And, it is finished. I can never be nor have ever been anything without His love and mercy. So, thankfully I am reminded of that this lent, as in the past.

Once again, I'll begin there. At the foot of His cross. Because I am His. And He is my beloved.