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As I wrote about last week, can there be anything better than the sliver of silence on side 2 of Bruce Springsteen’s The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle? In it, we listen to the ascending piano figure that concludes the gorgeous ballad, “Incident on 57th Street,” only for it never to resolve. The song simply ends suspended, à la the series finale of The Sopranos, although the very lack of satisfying conclusion to “Incident” mirrors the story of the song. Does the Romeo protagonist survive one last night of stylized violence and then return to his Juliet, or does he do what Romeos tend to do? The song’s piano coda refuses to answer that question.

Meanwhile, The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle was originally programmed in such a way that between “Incident on 57th Street” and the next tune, “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” there isn’t that standard, two second-ish gap between tracks. Instead, we hear only the faintest of split seconds separating the not-an-ending-but-an-ending of “Incident” before “Rosalita,” Springsteen’s original party anthem, roars to life. In that moment, you feel the beautiful sadness of “Incident” and the anticipatory elation of “Rosalita” as a single emotion. You’ll not ever catch a charged silence more alive than this one.

But you can read about a couple of doozies. At Liberti Collingswood, we often talk about how the story of the scriptures (and therefore the story of the world) comes to us in successive acts, namely those of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Creation is tethered, of course, to when God first made everything at the beginning of Genesis.  Next, the fall occurs when Adam and Eve sampled the forbidden fruit, redemption gives creation the comeback it (and we) don’t quite deserve in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, and we await a final restoration of all things when Christ returns at the end of time to complete the work of renewal that he’s already begun through the cross.

And whaddaya know, at the constitutive moments of both creation and redemption in the Bible, we glimpse magic in the silences. Listen in:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)
In the beginning, the world was nothing, and there was silence. A piano melody that merely fades into the ether with no conclusion. Then quiet.

However, after the most delicate sliver of silence: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’” (Genesis 1:3). Suddenly, everything is illuminated.

Sometimes when I read Genesis 1, I take it slowly. (“Lectio divina” is what the kids call it.) I’ll linger a while as a mute Spirit of God broods over the deep, perched like a hushed owl before soaring to life, and making life. Studies are conducted and articles written about the quietest places on earth, but there’s no quiet like the quiet at the beginning of Genesis 1.

Likewise, as bone silent as we encounter the formless creation in Genesis 1:1-2, I read God’s “let there be light” as a glorious explosion. It’s Mannheim Steamroller, Blue Man Group, and Born in the U.S.A.-era Bruce Springsteen all at once. The moment when Rosalita shows up at the party and never leaves.

Don’t rush straight to “let there be light” when you spend time in Genesis 1. Appreciating the photo negative just before will only heighten how the suddenness of light will leave you breathless.

There’s the magic silence in creation. We’ll consider the same sign for redemption next week.

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