Annihilate (verb): destroy utterly; obliterate; defeat

Christian Wiman describes God as an “annihilating silence” in My Bright Abyss.

What does Wiman mean by this?  That God is a soundless, destructive force?  That God is an unapprehensible energy moving among us?  Or, that God is a SILENCE that can destroy all the NOISE of our life, all the CHAOS and CACOPHONY that exists in our world and turns us from God?

As I sit here, pen to clean pad of paper, writing what I think and thinking as I write, SILENCE focuses me, SILENCE guides me, SILENCE destroys the doubt and distraction that inevitably rise but cannot flourish within the absence of noise.  God is in this annihilating SILENCE and I am in God.

[Feature Image: “Silence” by Giulia van Pelt]