I didn't want to move. Didn't want to go anywhere. The quiet was my kind of quiet:
"And if this is what it takes for You to shine
Then let me be refined..."
Drop for drop for minute passing while the same song goes singing on repeat. My quiet kept starting it over again.
"I am broken now
Caught up in the lies
I've been found out
This time I can't deny
It..."
The other night I rediscovered a quiet place I haven't been to all summer. And really, I probably haven't been there since my surgery.
It's peace.
It's still - ness.
Tranquil. Quiet. Serene.
It's all that I need for the life I'm caught up in. I'm not implying my life to be some uncensored bacchanalian ritualistic adventure. On a much more practical and real level, my life is the normal life of going to&fro from one commitment to the next distraction.
And to be quite blunt, the quiet I found was Divine.
Ben played on by himself. The room was busy. It was getting late so some of the kids were going to catch their rides home. But I was that guy in famous busy New York street scenes where I'm caught up in the crowd, but I'm just standing there, not moving with the crowd and not moving against them. And I'm looking up to the sky. And for the end of the movie I'm the focus. It's not an arrogant thing. It's not an "I'm better than you" thing. But it's me being that different the directors are looking for.
It's me, still in my own way.
He kept playing. The room was thinning out. And I was glued to my chair. Bit of a slouch. Relaxed for the most part. Listening:
"Sometimes I wish I was already there
You remind me that You're holding me with care
And I will wait for you..."
And I kept waiting in my car tonight. Kept playing four minutes and three seconds over and over and looking around in slow motion ways. The night sky was blurred from the trailing rains that were stealing my car for a bed. But who's to bother the inevitable. The rains could have flooded the streets and taken my car out of gear so I would have gone careening down the hill I was parked on. I would have found myself in the bogs. And I probably would have found a new perspective on the moment I was living.
But I have to bet you that tonight's quiet would have kept playing on:
"And when I'm down
And when this man is done
You remind me
That You're making all things new..."
I don't know how I caught this quiet or how it caught me. But all I can tell you is that I'm thankful for the time out from all that we consider normal. Because it's not like this quiet lies far beyond the outskirts of our noisy lives. It is a quiet like those imaginary friends we used to keep so close when we were children. But for some reason, the moment we come to, somewhere in our pre-adolescent years, we wave "Bye" to such faithful companions. And if we rediscover those invisible people later on in life we kill them as quick as they flashed in for sanity's sake. But this quiet is a different sort of childhood companion.
I guess I dub it a childhood friend because it's one that brings me back to a place of complete peace where mom was the comfort and dad was the hero that could fend off any beast who tried to attack me in the middle of the night.
This is one kind of quiet we should never wave "Good Bye" to. And please, when you rediscover this quiet, take that four and some odd minutes, and keep replaying it over till the porch lights go out and you can see the house sleeping.
That's not when it's time to go in.
That's your queue to linger on and listen to your quiet play:
"Cause the light in the dark is starting to show
And the river of love overflows
Everything in this world never stays the same
But I know that I know that I know
Your love will never change, never change, for me..."
Deem, Ben. "Refined (live)." Right Before Our Eyes. Ben Deem Band. CD.
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