God is a gentleman

God is a gentleman. I’ve been speaking, non stop. Sometimes, I make sense. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes, I don’t even try. I was talking, gaplessly, almost breathlessly. Who was I talking to? Certainly not God, perhaps not even myself. It was addressed to God, but it wasn’t really for him because I never waited for a response. Is it because of disbelief? Or is it because obnoxious self concern and absorption? I’m not sure. If i was self absorbed, i was absorbed in an illusion of self, a lack of it, a false belief that I have to make it, or worse, prove it. God waited and listened to all my sense and nonsense. He attended to my words when I tried being coherent and when I simply threw up my hands. He doesn’t interject when there’s a slight gap, when I take half a breath. He waits for me to speak and he awaits for me to continue to speak. God is a gentleman. He doesn’t interrupt my words. He doesn’t even interrupt my thoughts. He doesn’t cut off when I am speaking. He doesn’t even cut off my mere intention to speak. He waits and awaits for me to finish. 

 

I stopped talking. I fell silent. I’m not sure if it is because I was done talking or because I was tired or perhaps I was tired of talking? Regardless, fortunately, finally, I fell silent. The silence hit me, loomed and took over the room. The silence became deafening. It was, oddly, even louder than the noise before. It felt like we had just finished cooking (the smoky, wok-using sort) and was finally able to turned off the extractor fan after it has been on for a very long time. Only when I fell silent did I finally realise that he had been silent all along. It was in this silence did I realise, retrospectively, how loud and noisy it was, I was, before. To my surprise, he didn’t hurry to speak. He just waited and remained in the silence. We, the two of us, sat and waited in the silence that he carries and beholds and made room for and that I had finally leaned into, allowed and consented to.

 

First, in that silence, it felt like he, we, were waiting for something. I thought he waited to confirm that I have indeed finished talking. So I waited for him to say something. But he didn’t. He remained silent. Then I thought he was waiting for something else. Maybe he is showing me something. So I waited for something to appear, for something to be shown to me. I looked around the room and towards the door. I looked at his hands and tried to peer behind his back. Nothing. Nothing came. Nothing sounded. Nothing moved. I waited and wondered what we were waiting for. I made some guesses, some mundane, others miraculous. But nothing came. I stopped guessing. I just waited. We waited for so long that I had forgotten that we were waiting for something. The silence stretched on, and we just waited. At some point, I stopped waiting for anything. 

 

Nothing was before me except him, which is everything. Everything was before me. I gazed at him. I looked at his face. I could see that he missed me. He missed just being with me. This was what he was waiting for: without the noise, without all that could be but needn’t be said. And when I saw his face, watched his posture, noticed the lines between his eyebrows, and the creases around the corner of his right eye, I realised that I had missed this too. I missed noticing him, I missed watching him, I missed gazing. I missed him. He was in the silence. I never really doubted that. But this time. In this prolonged silence, I noticed that I was in the silence too. Much that couldn’t be but need to be said was in the silence. Instantly, I knew, my questions, frustrations and pain, was answered, resolved and felt and had been for centuries. Instantly, I was captured and stunned by the realisation that he knew and had known (for centuries) what I had been frantically trying to describe but never quite succeeded in capturing, nonstop, and more. He was listening patiently, he was waiting kindly for me to finish even though nothing I said was new to him. He knows all those words. He knows what I was trying to say with them. He knows how to say them better. He doesn’t need words. But he knows I do, so he listened. He cared to listen not because he was curious about the content of my speech, but simply because he cared for the speaker, me. His curiosity for me is not motivated by uncertainty, as most if not all human curiosity is. Divine curiosity, insofar it can be called that, is motivated by knowing. 

 

Then, suddenly, it became obvious that we were not waiting for anything. It was both a sudden and a slow realisation, that we were just waiting. [It occurred to me that it was the silence, another word for each other, that we were waiting for. // It occurred to me that we were waiting for the silence, and for each other, by that I just mean he was waiting for me.] We waited to just enjoy the silence together, simply being with. He was waiting for me to wait for him like he waits for me. We waited to await each other and the world. In that awaiting, the silence became wonderfully rich, imbued with meaning, for which there are no words to tell, only being can show.

 

Silence is a guest of god. He has been knocking at our door. God heard him. god let him in. He was here on the sofa, sat two feet next to me as I talked. I didn’t see him. But now I do. I felt its presence. I felt god.

 

The room fell silent, but it didn’t become empty. Instead it became filled, with presence. Only when the noises are gone, can existence be felt. We are animals whose senses are connected. And in that presence, of his and mine, we basked, and bathed, and held. This is what it is to behold, to await: to be in being.