Perhaps You are not
where I have learned to look.

Not in the breaking,
the great unraveling of stone,
not in the violence
that makes the mountains tremble.

Not in the fire
that consumes the dark
or the thunder
that makes the heart afraid.

Perhaps You are closer.

So close
I mistake You for silence.

I retreat into the small cave
I have made of myself,
where fear and longing
sit together in the dark,
and wait.

And then
everything falls away.

The wind.
The fire.
The trembling.

Even the need
to understand.

There is only
this breath,

this stillness,
this almost-nothing
that is somehow
more than everything.

A whisper
too tender for the ears,
yet somehow
the soul remembers it.

Not a voice
that commands,
but a presence
that draws me near.

Not an answer,
but an opening.

And suddenly
I know.

You were never hiding
in the thunder.
You were waiting
beneath it.

You were never absent
from the fire.
You were the stillness
that remained
when the fire was gone.

Please teach me
to stop searching
for You in what overwhelms me.

Instead teach me
to become small enough
to hear what cannot be heard,

still enough
to receive what cannot be grasped,

empty enough
to discover
that You have been here
all along.

Be disposed,
my soul.

Be still.

Listen.

The Holy One
is whispering.

~based on 1 Kings 19