Some days are really terrific and really exhausting. Some days are just really awful and exhausting and leave you feeling really down and even depressed. Then there are days that offer both kinds of exhaustion and it’s hard to know what to make of them. It is at such times when I really long for peace, comfort and quiet. Not just any quiet though, the quiet of Christ.There is an old choral anthem I really like called When Rooks Fly Homeward. The last line of it says, “When night is one with the brooding sea, then comes the quiet of Christ to me.”  Sundays are always an exhausting day for me. I work as organist and music director for a Lutheran church about 25 minutes from where I live. After going and providing music for their service I head to a Sacrament meeting in a ward close by and then try and make it back to my own ward in time for Priesthood.

I really was longing for this quiet of Christ and it just wasn’t there in the Sacrament meeting I went to. As I left the Sacrament meeting and made the 25 minute drive to my own ward, my mind was wandering all over the place wondering what I did wrong and why I wasn’t feeling it. I got back to my own ward in time and as I sat listening to the priesthood lesson it hit me. Here was the quiet of Christ that I had been searching for. I felt comfortable and peaceful. I’m not sure what changed, but something did. I felt it again later on in the evening when I had occasion to go over to my sister’s house for something. I sat there “hanging out” with her, her husband and children and felt that warm and comfortable feeling.

The quiet of Christ is not exclusive to the night time. Sometimes at night when the rest of the world is quiet it’s easier to feel. But the spirit is available to us any time of day. And it comes to us sometimes in places when we aren’t even aware and it comes over us so quietly and gently that it takes a few minutes to realize that it’s there. But it is there and we can have it and enjoy the peace and quiet of Christ that Joseph Campbell speaks of in his poem;

When rooks fly homeward and shadows fall,
When roses fold on the hay yard wall,
When blind moths flutter by door and tree,
Then comes the quiet of Christ to me.

When stars look out on the children’s play,
When gray mist gather on carn and rath,
When night is one with the brooding sea,
Then comes the quiet of Christ to me.

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