Give up ‘the noise’ this Lent

It was around half eight of a sunny summer’s evening that I was passing by their home in the townland of Killybandrick outside the village of Redhills. It was perched, their house, beneath the hill devoid of rushes, that he had shored by hand with pick and shovel and lined with slate and stone, inch by inch and mile by mile.

It had been his whole life’s work, this land of his father’s, which he worked hard as he had played on the football field those long years ago, of which his knees and hips reminded as he tottered up the chapel for Communion of a Sunday morning. She had cared for him, his youngest sister, remaining at his side in these his failing years, quiet and unassuming, decent in all things, loving God and their neighbour. She told me of the crop of potatoes that she had sown of a Good Friday and now were near to flowering, inviting me to call by some evening in my passing to cast an eye over them.

So I pulled up my car in passing by and called by their quaint and pretty home. Beautiful ridges all neat and in symmetrical rows greeted me as I turned the corner of the house, dug fornent the back street rising with the slope of the hill away from the house drawing the eye to the row of neatly kept out houses beneath the shade of the sycamore trees. I knocked gently on the door of the back kitchen that was left slightly ajar and on hearing muffled voice I dared to venture in.

There as I further opened the door into the living room, I found the two, brother and sister, one in their seventies and the other in their eighties, kneeling at two armchairs each side of the cream enamelled range on which a kettle sat singing to her heart's content.

They were lost in prayer, the two of them, unaware of my entering in, lost too in time given over in thanksgiving at the close of the day as I took my seat at the table and joined, silently, in these sacred moments. It is one of the most vivid memories I carry with me, this brother and sister, hard-working in their daily lives but finding time to kneel in the kitchen of their home, lost in prayer.

As I read an article during the week encouraging readers to embrace periods of quiet and nothingness each day for their wellbeing, I thought on those good and decent people, now gone to God. Despite all that occupied their day, they took time to stop in a day, at its close, to give over time to silence of the mind and prayer, a period when their thoughts surely wandered to so many things and yet in the mantra, in the repetition of the prayers, all was made well and healing wrought.

The periods of nothingness that the writer talked of in the article were periods of the day in which he encouraged all devices to left aside, the blare of the television, ear pods phones, ipads, you name it, a time in the day when you walk or sit without distraction and allow your mind to be. The writer told that therein creativity and new ideas flourish, the imagination comes alive and a regeneration of the mind takes place. Our constant scrolling through Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok dulls the mind and the imagination and leads you further into the depths of stress and frustration.

In all things in life there is need for a time when things are left fallow. Land in the past was left fallow to regenerate itself, so too with gardens, the same crop was not sown in the same patch year on year and so too with ourselves, we need time each day for fallowness.

Lent is a time of the year when we are encouraged to embrace fallowness or nothingness not for nothingness sake but to allow God to enter in. Jesus gives this example in the gospels, when he spends forty days alone in the desert without that which supports him and like us all in the midst of the nothingness he is distracted.

There are so many things to distract today, so many things drawing on our attention, luring us in, not for our own good but to fulfil the greed and needs of others dragging us onward until we are captivated, hooked, addicted and our minds and hearts are taken prisoner.

We need to stand apart from the yoke of distraction and embrace the emptiness, the fallowness to allow God to enter in, bringing about change in our lives and in our living.

My friends in Killybandrink inherently knew this, it was part of their very being, instilled in them from little children; in this world of distraction, we might all give up the noise this Lent for a period in the day to embrace the silence and allow our minds to lie fallow.

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