When God speaks, do we listen? Are we still enough to notice? Quiet enough to hear?

Are we waiting for the roar of thunder, when actually God is whispering, caressing our face with a cool breeze, soothing us with a gentle rain? Are we looking for proof of the Lord’s presence through heavenly power, when God is trying only to give us peace?

In the dark stillness of a June night in Long Pond on Mount Desert Island, God’s soft tap on my shoulder might as well have been delivered with a blow from a heavenly hammer.

I sat silently in a small boat with my wife, aunt and uncle in the middle of the long waterway. The imposing silhouettes of Beech and Mansell mountains, backlit softly by a star-filled sky, stood sentry to the south.

From the east, two loons sent their mournful wail across the black water, the echoes so mesmerizing I found myself silently pleading, “Please, don’t stop!”

From the west, a barred owl repeated its unanswered question again and again: “Who? Who? Who cooks for you?”

To the south, our dock waited out of sight in the darkness, but we resisted any inclination to restart the motor and head back to the house being shared for the week by 13 members of my extended family.

While rippling waves rocked us as gently as a mother with her newborn baby, I silently prayed. I thanked God simply for the serenity of that very moment, for declaring his dominion with such astoundingly understated clarity, for delivering proof of his presence far more convincingly than any sermon or hymn ever could.

But there was more. As I prayed on, I asked that every man, woman and child could feel, even for just one moment, the same kind of peace. They might never experience a combination of senses so overwhelming, but maybe they would see God’s hope in the playful innocence of a child’s eyes, feel him in the sun’s welcome warmth on a cold winter day, breathe him in the fragrance of a single bloom in a dirty city slum, hear him in a string section of crickets on a summer night.

“Just let them be still,” I prayed, “and know that you are God.”

John Deem is a writer from Huntersville, N.C., who visited Maine last month. He may be reached via jdeem11@aol.com. Voices columnist Erica Maltz is on vacation. Voices is a weekly commentary by people who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life in Maine.