Why I did not go to Church today.

I’m back after taking a week off from making entries to “Povey Prattle”.  That week off was intentional. 

I decided to keep blog silence in the run up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11/01.   

 

Beginning last Sunday (4^th September 2011) reporters, pundits and “John Q Public” of the media: (newspapers, radio, television and social media such as Facebook)  went into overdrive with stories, and re-hashed stories, and opinion and natter about the cruel and ghastly events of 10 years ago.

All that has needed to be said has been said, and said over and over again. And then again.

 I decided that my two cents’ worth was worth exactly 2c, so I shut up.  Whatever I might have said on my blog would have been preachy or platitudinous, and I could well have gone “overboard” in a rant or two. (What, “a rant from jmp”?  How shocking that would be!)  

Even today I did not listen to the radio (I never watch T.V.).  I simply cannot endure the babble.

 

Nor did I go to Church.  I know that my parish would have dealt with the anniversary with great decorum and decency, and I know that today’s preacher, (retired priest Charles K), would have had just the right words. 

Nor did I attend the sensitively planned inter-faith (Christian, Jewish, Muslim) evening service at Sarasota’s First Presbyterian Church.

 

Because for today I did not need words, nor would they have helped.  The biblical book of Ecclesiastes says that “there is a time to keep silence”. (Ecclesiastes 3 v 7). 

 

This week and this day have been the time for my voice to be muted, and for my ears to be open so that I might be enlightened by silence.

 As Catholic Priest Fr. Thomas Keating puts it “Listening to the Spirit in silent prayer is a key to knowing what to do.  Action is most effective when it comes from that place”