noise

Noise

noise is an unwanted sound
which is why your parents call (called) the music you like noise

but noise isn’t just about sound
it’s about information
noise is whatever drowns out or interferes with or
conceals meaningful information
sound engineers, radio engineers speak of two things, signal and noise
the signal is the message, the meaningful part of transmission
the noise is all the unwanted stuff that interferes with your
ability to hear or decipher the signal
our lives are full of noise
too many messages that don’t add up to any coherent whole
all competing for our attention we can’t find the signal or make
any sense of our lives

and so we go into the desert to escape the noise

but then we can hear our internal noise
some of which is very gross especially during silent
Prayer and some of which is subtle but more deeply
Disturbing like tinnitus which is nerve damage to the
inner ear resulting in a permanent whistling
or hissing noise inside your head
that you can never escape
and that’s just the physical noise inside us
but our heads are full of mental noise
the thoughts that won’t stop chattering that stupid song that
you can’t get out of your head that nagging worry about
something you said or didn’t say
that hurt and anger that you can’t let go of, churning inside you
when you’re supposed to be concentrating on work that dumb
joke that keeps making you giggle on the bus so that people
look at you strangely…
and when you’re alone you can’t pretend any more that any of
these were necessary
so you try and put them aside to pray
and now you become aware of spiritual noise

all those things that compete with God
distracting your attention towards selfish or worldly concerns
drowning out your attempts to hear God’s voice distorting the
message or making you lose bits like a mobile phone passing
under a bridge
sin is a kind of spiritual tinnitus
the closer we get to God’s silence the more we are aware of
the unceasing whine inside ourselves
of want and need and hurt and self
trouble is we’ve lost the volume knob and anyway we’re scared of silence because without all the activity and distractions
we’ll have to face ourselves and God and we are frightened of
what we might find
but God longs to heal us
to still the oscilloscopes of our souls
turn the noise off
and give us peace
because only then
will we be able to hear
the music of heaven

- Steve Collins