God of the noisy places

This week, Rabbi Miriam Lorie joined BBC Radio 2's Pause for Thought.

Listen here,

In about 40 minutes Sara Cox will begin her epic Great Northern Marathon Challenge for Children in Need - an incredible feat for an amazing cause. The first county she’ll be crossing is Northumberland - I expect she’s there warming up right now. Northumberland is where my family had our summer holiday this year, so Sara, if you’re listening, here are my reflections on Northumberland… and spirituality.

I would describe our time there with two words: quiet and noisy. You see, we were travelling with two, let’s say lively kids. So while Northumberland itself is peaceful, from the rolling moorland, rugged heather-topped hills and Holy Island, which has a special quiet of its own… we had a soundtrack of brotherly competition and squabbling.

Northumberland does have naturally noisy places. There are so many epic castles there, many filled today with happy children. An absolute high point was broomstick lessons at Alnwick Castle, where Harry Potter was filmed. And then, of course, there’s the sea. The gorgeous coastline with its noisy wind and the slap of the waves. 

I’m someone who finds spirituality easiest in quiet. But there is this Psalm, Psalm 98, which I like to call the noisy psalm. It imagines everything in the world praising God with loud sound. Some of its lines are :

“Shout for joy… all the Earth!”

“With trumpets and the sound of the ram’s horn... Let the sea and all that is in it thunder… let the rivers clap their hands”...

It’s a really good challenge for me to relax into connecting to God, not just despite noise, but through noise.

So Sara, I imagine in the next five days you’ll experience lots of clapping and cheering and the noise of nature and cars as you walk and jog, but probably plenty of quiet too. I hope that through the sore muscles and blisters, you might be able to find spiritual moments. Not just in the blissful quiet of the Northumberland countryside, but in the noise of nature and people there too. Psalm 98 imagines it as cheering for God, and I think it will be cheering on your amazing feat, too.