Synaesthesia Magazine Thunder, Lightning | Page 45

“Canticle of the Turning” by Rory Cooney
Copyright © 1990 by GIA Publications,
Inc.,www.giamusic.com
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

in a cave in the mountain, with fierce natural forces
raging outside. A ferocious wind tears mountains
apart and splinters rocks: but God is not in the wind.
After the wind there is an earthquake: but God is not
in the earthquake. After the earthquake there is a fire:
but God is not in the fire.
After the fire, Elijah ventures from the cave to
something so small that a less attuned prophet might
miss it. I want to translate it, “a sound of silence.”
Some recent transl ators say, “a low whisper” or “a
murmuring sound.” No translation is entirely
satisfying, but I think I know what it is. It is the pause
after nature’s violence. It is what happens in the beat
after you have gasped at the pyrotechnics. It
happens when you think the majestic display is over.
It happens when you relax, before you actively try to
understand what has just happened.
In this space, this silence, this gap, you realize.
You have absorbed wisdom somehow, or Presence, and
there is a new understanding in you.

Photograph by Paula Vermeulon

To my mind (though the author of the article
did not and so far as I know would not make this
claim) it also works in reverse. Violent, even
catastrophic, upheaval in the natural world can be
taken as a sign, a metaphor, even a beginning, of
transformation in the social world as well. A storm is
brewing, and the world is about to turn.
It embarrasses my demythologizing self to
admit it, but I love the theophany tradition in the
Bible: the times when the awesome transcendent
unimaginable One makes the divine Self perceptible
to mere mortals. It happens with spectacular special
effects, with thunder and lightning, earthquakes and
volcanoes.
I know, I know: even within the biblical
tradition, there is some backing off from the
association of wild natural phenomena with the
presence of the Holy.
Especially, there is Elijah, journeying against his
will to the mountain of God, dead set against going
on prophesying or living, either one. Eventually he is