The Sound Of The Big Blue Whale
Creation Story One: 1:1-2:4a
What’s striking about hearing God first speak, so to speak, is the sheer univocal power of His voice:
God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.
This is the opening example of that speaking-into-being we’ve noted. Where’s that voice gone? Is it only rolled out for universe-making and special occasions? Why is God so comparably quiet these days? I distinctly remember St Mother Teresa, in her latter years, describing her sense of God’s absence - His silence. My bones literally quivered at the words. What hope is there for any of us? The great nun appeared to be enduring the mystic experience that is The Dark Night of the Soul.
One of my absolute favourite novels is Shūsaku Endō’s, Silence - essentially a story length meditation on God’s silence. Or perhaps not. You can explore it with me here:
It took me a couple of reads to grasp the wisdom being imparted by Mr Endō – define silence. Which naturally brings us to the Blue Whale.
I’m no cetologist but it’s my understanding that their sounds can be heard at distances exceeding five hundred miles. Even taking into account sound travelling better in water than air, that’s five hundred miles! And what would we hear? Exactly nada. The sound is half as loud again as a passenger jet taking off but the frequency so low that only other Blues (and highly specialist equipment) can detect it.
There’s an old proverb (Portuguese, I believe): God writes straight with crooked lines. It’s appealing for its combined literary and spiritual power. I understand it to mean that only an infinite God could be present through a sense of absence, in the deafening silence. Hence, the Prophet Elijah in the First Book of Kings. Whilst in the presence of the hidden God there’s a mountain-shattering gale but that’s not where Elijah finds Him. Then there’s an earthquake, and then raging fire, but He’s not in them either. Then there’s the sound of a gentle breeze and Elijah recognises God’s appropriate presence, (1 Kgs 19:9-12). It’s not that God is absent from the other epiphanies. The point is about expectations of where to find Him.
I don’t hear God speaking at the volume of those first words of Genesis and I don’t personally know anyone who does. But, equally, it isn’t true that I don’t hear God speaking to me at all and obviously I know He could speak just as loud if necessary. If His booming voice can be found in the faintest whisper, then it must surely depend on your measuring instruments. In other words, your vocation. We hear what we’re meant to hear at the appropriate volume. If we’re listening.
As a Christian story writer one of my main concerns is finding the right frequency. It’s a challenge, (to put it mildly). As ever, the good Flannery already considered this many moons ago:
The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across… to the hard of hearing you shout.1
Each writer must work out the frequency appropriate for their work and which distortions to address. Flannery used exaggeration, wry comedy and shock to highlight such distortions in belief and character. Amongst many other things, Shūsaku Endō’s Silence portrays the fragility of triumphalist forms of faith and the inner strength of seemingly broken versions. It is deeply uncomfortable seeing faith and despair so closely aligned. William P Young’s The Shack tackles faith, personal revelation and utter trauma head on. The God dialogues in it felt a little too apologetic or high frequency for my taste but the redemptive character struggles were as good as it gets. Interestingly, it seemed to work better as a film because of the boiling-down imposed by time and moving image. Well, that’s what my blubbering told me anyway. The film Silence, on the other hand, whilst brilliantly acted and visualised, felt like a silhouette of the novel.
Perhaps the key phrase in Flannery’s statement is getting the vision across. I’m not so sure the modern assumption is always: no whale song therefore no whale. My own sense is that there’s still a deep longing to hear even the faintest sound of The Big Blue Whale in the endless oceans of the human heart. Maybe what’s required in order for that to happen is our silence - there’s a lot of surface noise around! Then, for those willing to listen, His eternal rumblings might be heard once again in the depths and received with joy, as with the coming of first light.
Be still, and know that I am God. (Ps 46:10)2
Header photo: Greg Becker, Unsplash
Mystery & Manners, Faber & Faber, London, 1972, p 34
This is so beautifully written. Thanks for sharing
The ancient rhetorician Longinus was similarly impressed by the vocal force of God as portrayed in scripture. This is a passage from his book, taken from G.M.A. Grube’s 1957 translation: “In this manner also the lawgiver of the Jews, no ordinary man, since he recognized and expressed divine power according to its worth, expressed this power clearly when he wrote at the beginning of his Laws: ‘And God said,’ (What?) ‘Let there be light; and there was light. Let there be land; and there was land.’” (Longinus, “On the Sublime” 9.9)