The Slow Mind of God
“The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.”
In The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss, the reader spends a week with mentally unstable Auri, who moves through the daily rhythms of washing, cleaning, obtaining food and other items for survival with great intentionality. She lives in the Underground—a vast metropolis hidden beneath a university city. She lives there alone, though she wouldn’t say that she is alone. She has befriended each room, pipe, glass, piece of wood, and shred of broken civilization. She talks to inanimate objects and views them as having personalities, speaking to her in turn.
You might think that the entire book is unhinged. Rothfuss said as much in the foreword, mentioning the sheer absurdity of writing a book that is essentially about… nothing.
However, I would argue that it is about a great deal. The Slow Regard of Silent Things alludes to the presence of the Holy, Divine Stillness even among the mundane and ordinary. It is about the gift of slowing down and listening to the silence. Auri is just such a character who is able to listen and hear what the silence says to her; we might call her mentally unstable, while the mystics of history might simply call her enlightened.
The prophet Elijah found this to be true: he heard the voice of the Lord God not in powerful winds, in earth-shattering quakes, or in roaring fires, but in a gentle whisper. He found God in the silence.
Ruth Haley Barton, in her book Sacred Rhythms, describes how silence speaks. Other Christian thinkers, Parker Palmer, David G. Benner, Barbara Brown Taylor, and John Mark Comer among them, iterate the same. I recommend all of their books on spiritual formation.
I can’t do justice to the topic, not when each of these writers and thinkers have spent far more time on the meaning of prayer and silence than I have. I can, however, share from experience.
Silence speaks.
When the noise of life quiets down (a truly miraculous feat in our tech-and-noise-inundated lives), God speaks in the silence. One might say that God is the silence.
But of course, the goal of spiritual practices like silence, solitude, fasting, and retreat isn’t simply to attain a mystical state where one is finally able to quiet their hectic, clamorous mind.
The goal is communion with God. To be with God, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer; our Prophet, Priest, and King; our One Love. The mystics call this union with God, where one feels utterly inseparable from the Divine Presence that is around, above, behind, and within them; their heart and God’s melded into one.
God is in no hurry to get us there, in that state with him. You might even say that the destination isn’t the goal, for communion with God happens at each stage along the way; he is with you in your struggle to find quiet and in the darkness and trouble in your life. God is not only found in the literal stillness of the world (though physically quietening the noise of our lives is necessary to begin hearing his still voice). He is walking with you as you struggle with your desperate desire to be with him even while you are hindered by every obstacle, errand, and appointment in your life.
God’s heart is vast and his mind is slow.
This is somewhat of a mystery to me; my mind defaults to resembling a pinball machine, bouncing off one thought or idea to the next with frantic pace, sometimes hammering one point several times in a row, but never staying long enough to consider what the substance of this thought actually is before bouncing off to the next one.
It’s hard to slow my mind.
Eugene Peterson calls this attempt to imitate the slow mind of God a long obedience in the same direction. His book of the same title walks through the Psalms of Ascent, discerning from them the characteristics of slow, patient discipleship. My seminary professor of Discipleship and Spiritual Formation, Dr. Susan Reese, called this walking with others. Just as Jesus walked with his disciples along the Emmaus Road, they none the wiser to his identity, God walks with us and invites us to do the same with others.
Perhaps it’s because I’m now well into my thirties that I long for this sort of slow presence in my life—with God and with others. The frantic hurry of youth has no appeal to me anymore. I need not rush to obtain answers, because answers are revealed slowly through experience, suffering, and waiting.
It’s radically countercultural. It might have always been, even well before the age of light bulbs and smartphones; this certainly seems the case when Jesus overturned money tables and used a whip to drive out the vestiges of business from the temple courts. Business makes the world go ‘round, they say. Except, it doesn’t.
The very breath of God breathed Life into this blue ball, transforming it from darkness and chaos into life, light, and order. The words of God created humans and gave them the command to keep his garden in perfect peace and love. Gardening can’t be rushed; plants only grow and produce so fast, no matter how well you prune, aerate, or fertilize them.
We are gardeners, not merchants. We are rulers who carve out spaces of life, not conquerors for our own personal gain. We are sheepherders who sit for hours on quiet hillsides, not kings who demand the strongest, fastest, and brightest to serve his glory.
This is our true vocation—to simply be in the presence of our still, slow God.
Sure, we work. We buy groceries, run errands, watch hockey games and dance classes, go to the dentist, and host family and friends for supper.
But these are not our true vocations. These things are the outflow of our being with God, not the destination of our lives.
We’ve conflated it, haven’t we? Our careers, families, social circles, and hobbies have outpaced our abilities to live well. All the philosophers and spiritual thinkers agree on this—a life well lived is a slow life.
This explains our frustration when we don’t receive an answer to our prayer right now; it’s because God’s mind is slow, and could it be that he is inviting us to join him in the process? Could it be that our prayers for God to act are his way of inviting our participation in seeing something beyond the immediate healing of body or relationships? Waiting on God is no passive thing; it is being with him, like a slow cup of coffee on a crisp autumn morning, or a visit with a friend where we look into their eyes, see their heart, ask, “How are you?” and take all the time in the world to listen to their response.
