Stillness

Today I've been paring down. My status update on Facebook said I'm taking a break from it - a month, to be specific. Not only that, but I just unsubscribed to several blogs I follow, and have decided that watching TV on the internet will also be out.

It's an attempt to regain silence, stillness, quietude, in my life. I am by nature an active, high energy person. The "manic beaver" I sometimes call myself. I feel God calling me to a quieter, more restful heart. I've decided to have it, that I must be ruthless in eliminating the noise.

Here's what C.S. Lewis said about noise in his book The Screwtape Letters, which was written as letters from Screwtape, the under-secretary to the devil, and his nephew, Wormwood, detailing the best ways to tempt the people of God:

"My dear Wormwood: Music and silence - how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell-though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express, no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise - Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile-Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end."

I'm hoping that in the absence of these distractions, I will allow God to train my heart to be still. Not an easy task for the manic beaver, but a necessary one. I'll still post here, hopefully things that I am able to hear more clearly without the noise.