I escaped to the country to drink in silence, to soak in stillness.
During the day, the pond by my room sat docile and quiet.
A few dragonflies skimmed the surface with a barely audible buzz
as they hovered above lily pads like pocket-sized helicopters.
But at night, as I lay in bed, the pond just outside my bedroom window
burst into a cacophony of croaking, gulping, chirping, and guzzling.
It was not the silence I was seeking — but it sounded like a symphony,
a chorus of noise, as frogs took up song just feet from my pillow.
In all that dissonance outside, I heard the praise of frogs. It was glorious.
We often speak of finding Him in silence, but what about noise?
The Bible tells us that all the Earth sings praises to Him.
Once I heard the notes fill the air, I heard it everywhere.
The whoosh of wind in the forest as it rushes through the trees.
Leaves jingle upon branches like coins on the belt of a belly dancer.
Mountain streams babble and coo against mossy rocks.
They sing their adoration,
voices joining, merging, swelling into a rushing river chorus,
meeting crescendo over a cliff as a waterfall.
It sounds like applause.
Where the ocean meets land, waves lap upon the shore,
an ancient cotillion of meet and retreat.
And if you follow those waves out, beyond, and dive into the deep,
you will hear the song of whales — other-worldly wails pleading, yearning, crying out.
Light flashes above the deep, in the place where water and sky divide.
Lightning strikes split the sky. Thunder bellows like low notes on a pipe organ.
Let the sea and sky and everything in it storm a tremendous roar.
And higher yet, soaring beyond our atmosphere,
where the heavens spread and stretch into sparkling manifold,
there is sound even there.
Emission from magnetic fields, perhaps far beyond our galaxy,
return as transcendent opus. A howling celestial wonder.
Yes, all the cosmos shouts. All the planets sing.
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