I am lying back on the couch after furiously taking the rubbish out to the bins, filling one with a stack of branches and leafy mess that’s been sitting on the paved area out back for ages – yes it’s 9:30pm, loading the dishwasher with 7 people’s dishes still sitting there from the other night and finishing the rest by hand then getting lemon sauce off the stove-top. And I am too stuffed to do what I originally planned (start making the dress) so I open the autobiography that I am reading – Thomas Merton (Who is/was(?) a Trapist Monk – the book is Elected Silence and frankly it is exceptional) and I have this old John Michael Talbot record on so it’s crackling away quite loudly because I haven’t turned it down from whatever was previously on there. The song that is on is the title track: Come to the Quiet. And then it finishes. There is nothing for this beautiful, deafening moment until the dishwasher noise kicks back into range and the traffic noise past my window comes into ugly focus.
Psalm 131
A song of ascents. Of David.
1 My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.
I met my nine-day old second cousin Josiah today. I’ve not held a lot of babies to be honest and certainly not one so new. It kind of freaks me out to think this is a whole person so desperately reliant on others.
I also recommend listening to Vivaldi’s Largo (Winter) while driving at night with lightning.
