I did something unusual on the drive to my office this morning. After a minute or two of familiar music, I turned it off and drove the remaining twenty-three minutes in silence. Not necessarily quiet, but silence.
Actually, my actions may not have been entirely accidental. Yesterday, two things happened. First, a friend wrote a post about leaving social media. It made perfect sense to me because I have the same feelings fairly regularly. Second, as I always do, I led my congregation’s monthly Ladies Guild Bible study group here at Our Savior. It’s a fantastic group of ladies who are devoted to Christ and His Word. The topic of the study was peace—what it is, what it isn’t, and how, from a Christian perspective, it has little if anything to do with our circumstances. Admittedly, the study’s conversations stayed with me, too. And so, here’s what I mean.
I drive a black two-door Jeep Wrangler. I’ve driven several Wranglers in my lifetime. The one I have now has a hard top. It’s slightly lifted by about two inches. The tires are also a bit larger than stock. Anyone who’s driven a Jeep Wrangler knows they’re not necessarily serene vehicles. Put a soft top on it, which I’ve owned before, and “not necessarily serene” becomes a massive understatement. They become wind tunnels. Maybe the newer models aren’t so bad. But the ones I’ve known were never quiet. Even with a hard top, wind slips through where it can. The road hums. Things creak. At seventy miles an hour—at least that’s the pace I’m going to admit—the whole thing speaks in resonance and vibrations.
And yet, for one reason or another, this morning’s ride was rather peaceful by comparison to most.
Usually, all my Wrangler’s sounds are buried beneath something else—music, podcasts, and news clips from various sources. Apparently, I’m inclined to drown out the natural sound every day, and to do so as a matter of habit. But not this morning. Today was wind, asphalt, engine, motion, a Buick in the passing lane slowing everyone else’s pace, a truck hauling who knows what to who knows where, the rhythm of rain (that would eventually become snow) tapping against the windshield and being sent away for a few seconds by the wipers before returning. All of this was happening.
I don’t want to get too philosophical here. However, there is a lesson to be learned. There’s a lesson in everything, if only we’re willing to consider the possibility.
Concerning my morning drive, I wondered how much of life we miss because we’re always piping something else into it. We insulate ourselves from the ordinary textures of being alive. I get why we do it. Real life isn’t polished, and perhaps worse, it doesn’t flatter us. In that sense, the real world is noisy in ways we’d never willingly choose. I mean, who wants a life that rattles and hums, whether literally or figuratively? And so, for one reason or another, we do what we can to cover it up, choosing instead to curate our surroundings. I listen to music and such while driving to pass the time. But is passing the time always best? Well, when someone or something else is thinking for me, maybe not. But regardless of the reason, I suppose one of my concerns is that, when we pipe so much extra stuff into our lives, we risk losing our bearings. In other words, we risk forgetting where we are, what we’re supposed to be doing, and maybe even who we’re with because we’re always somewhere else listening to that somewhere else’s noise.
Does that make sense? Maybe not. Again, I don’t want to be too philosophical. In the end, I’ll simply say that sometimes it’s good to turn things off and unplug—not because the anticipated silence will be actual quiet, but because it’ll be an opportunity to let life sound like life. And by the way, regardless of how some might ultimately define peace, only Christians know what peace truly is when life is making a racket. But again, even in a superficial, everyday sense, even mortal peace doesn’t always come from hearing what we prefer. Sometimes it comes from hearing what’s been there all along. I suppose a Jeep Wrangler, absent all artificial sound, traveling noisily down US23, is sometimes just the place to learn that lesson.
Cruciform Stuff 