Noise

I laid in bed for a long time, eyes closed, just listening to the rain drops slide down the roof and hit the puddle that had formed below. In the distance birds were singing as the rain had stopped for a while. Once in a while a car would swish past on the road in front of our house and I resented their sound...it stole away my natural noises of the morning. It made me think though about how much noise we hear and how silence or the sounds of nature just get lost in the mixing bowl of sounds man makes. We are bombarded with noises, the telephone goes with us now so everywhere you go you hear ringers of all kinds, we have radios in our cars, stereos in our homes, surround sound televisions, phones at home too. We wake to alarm clocks that buzz or beep. Our stoves have buzzers, microwaves too. We plug into sounds when we are running, walking or "resting". Suddenly after thinking about all the sounds that are around us all, it felt as if the sounds God has given us in nature could be lost to us in the din. Even churches now fill the space of the building with bands and loud music, chasing away the quiet of contemplation.

The mornings rain left the sky gray and dark, just about the shade that comes right between the departure of the night sky and the coming of the sun. I opened my eyes and rolled over when some thunder boomed and shook me from my thoughts. It was a sharp sort of thunder, not the rolling kind. It was then I decided to look at the clock.....8:30 a.m. ! What a lazy girl I had been. Emery must have been super quiet as I never heard him get up and get ready for work.

I can just imagine him looking at me sleeping and smiling, deciding I must need the sleep. He is like that, unselfish and always filled with tender love. He is a godly man.

With rain now pouring down and thunder booming I decided the critters could wait just a bit for their food. I resisted the urge to turn on the television to see what kind of storms were around.

Weather people like the thrill of bad weather so much, you can see their excitement in their gestures and many times, not all of course the "if" is much greater than reality. I do appreciate the weather, especially here in tornado country, but more times than not, I would have been fine not watching the "perhaps". We have tornado sirens in our town that go off if its really bad.

As I lit the lamps around the house, I wondered if some of the intrigue with the Amish lifestyle doesn't come from our inner longing for less noise and forced influence of modern life on us.

Maybe we would all like to "escape" the din for a while and just hear our floors creak and the steady ticking of a old clock. Maybe at times we long for stores without 50 other people in arms reach and the slow clippedy clop of a buggy taking places. Maybe we wish for family all together at the table, breaking bread, sharing our day. Maybe we wish we had a feeling of security knowing our friends and family would come to our aid if need be. I wish for that level of quietude and simplicity at times myself.

Sure that life is not perfect, you have people behaving like people in all settings, but maybe at times we just wish for things to be a bit slower, a bit quieter, a bit more orderly.

Pictures from around the house this morning