The Right Kind of Noise
What first sounded like background noise became an unexpected lesson in discernment. From birdsong to ancient prayers, this reflection invites you to tune your ear to the right kind of noise.
This doe likes to look into my office window
One morning in July, I sat outside on our deck and opened my Bible. After reading a few verses, birdsong filled the air. Curious, I downloaded an app that identifies birds and just let it do its thing for ten minutes while I read. My wife had told me she had done this a few days prior.
During that brief span, the app identified a surprising variety: a brown-headed cowbird, American redstart, Carolina wren, blue jay, hairy woodpecker (as opposed to a non-hairy woodpecker?), white-breasted nuthatch, eastern wood-pewee, house finch, American robin, gray catbird, house sparrow and a northern cardinal.
Who knew that at least a dozen types of birds hung out in the forest by my apartment?
As each one sang, the app identified it by highlighting the breed. After a few minutes, I found myself recognizing whether a song came from a house finch or a Carolina wren. Before that, it would have all blended together.
It struck me how similar this is to the way we learn to discern God’s voice. At first, everything feels like noise – voices, opinions, emotions, even spiritual impressions. But over time, as we listen with intention, we begin to recognize patterns. We start to notice what brings peace and what stirs anxiety. We begin to tell the difference between God’s whisper and our own striving, between truth and error.
In the same way, God is using the neighborhood my wife and I moved into a few months ago to shape me. It’s not just the birds. Or the deer who peer into the window while I work. Or tree branches swaying in the breeze. No, it’s more than that. Deeper than that.
My wife and I sat in our home office the other night where I read liturgy to her at her request. It included a number of scripture passages, the Doxology (which I attempted to sing, even though I cannot sing), the Apostles’ Creed, the Gloria Patri, a confession of sin by Gregory the Great, a prayer of illumination from the Middelburg Liturgy, a prayer of intercession from the Book of Common Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer.
While not every word landed, many did … in both our hearts, I think. For me, I think it was these words from the Middelburg Liturgy:
“Almighty God, and most merciful Father, we humbly submit ourselves and fall down before your Majesty, imploring you from the bottom of our hearts, that this seed of your Word, now sown among us, may take such deep root, that neither the burning heat of persecution, cause it to wither, neither the thorny cares of this life choke it, but as seed sown in good ground, it may bring forth thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold, as your heavenly wisdom has appointed.”
