This week's prayerful focus on Repentance...
“You are such a poor listener.”
The barbed words catch, sting.
I own them. And the wrenching stab. They’re rightly mine.
For it’s true: I had had ears only for the plink, plank, plunk of berries in the bottom of my bucket, the fill of blue, the rustle of the bushes loosening its sapphires.
The noise in my head went something like this: If twenty minutes of harvesting yields half a bucket, and if we’d like two cups of berries swirled through smoothies every week during winter’s heavy white, we’ll need to pick for how long? Then, to account for the gas: at 93 cents a litre, driving 225 km to this field of sweet indigo, and berries cost $2.10 a pound, how many pounds need be reaped to make this jaunt worthwhile? It was this ferris wheel calculating business, this warped determining if this was a day well spent. Round and round and round.
To my (pitiful) defense, at the fringe of my figuring, my picking, I was listening with half an ear, complete with obligatory nodding. But I concede: I was, as is too often the case, task oriented. Focused. Busy.
The Japanese symbol for busy is a slash through the heart. I am that: busy. Thus, (is it true?) heartless. With a soundless, hollow chest cavity, I go about, carelessly slashing into oblivion (what a nauseating thought) the hearts that beat around me. So we all grow hard and lifeless.
Every heart that pulses on this whirling rock ---thrum, thrum, thrum— sirens to the world to lean in, wait… and listen. Hearts beat to be heard. What throbs under a ribcage, the thrust of all that is alive and warm, awaits a cochlear and soul stethoscope. And, (dare I confess such ugliness?), I am busy. I don’t have time. I am, sadly, on my way to somewhere, something, fast. I am the oblivious one rushing on by.
But even at this pace, I hear the question calling after: Since when is this the way of God? From somewhere inside comes the answer: It isn’t.
The God of the Psalms is the Listening God. He is the God who hears. David howls to the heavens. His ache surges, his pain boils, his seething agony erupts. And God hears. The God of the galaxy, who counts hairs and sparrows, pauses, leans low, and presses His warm heart into his. He attends. God listens.
It’s why we cherish the Psalms. Someone—The Someone—witnesses our being, hears the swoosh of our heart, listens to the feelings, hot and salty, coursing through our veins. To go God's way is to do it God's way: God-followers are listeners. They pause and listen; really listen.
There, bracketed by rows of blueberry bushes, my two ears were, in the most technical sense, listening. But I need a third ear. A soul eardrum. A heart that isn’t slashed and slashing in it’s wildly beating busyness. A soul with ears.
The next morning brings sun’s warm rays and a card on my pillow, a greeting in the tentative scrawl of a six-year-old. The day brings a birthday and the tradition of a family going-away day. I smile at the drawn cake with its candles of raging fire…then open the lovingly cut, cock-eyed card to read, “Wher ar you goin?”
Exactly.
Little Levi wants to know where we will go to celebrate the gift of living. But the voice of God speaks in these pencil scratchings, asking. Here, before the day begins, I hear Him in the quiet. Where exactly are you rushing to again with this life of yours? Where are you going to so fast? This busyness that’s slashing this heart, all hearts. That’s chipping and cracking this gift of life. Where is it taking you?
The words of a martyred Russian priest point where I should go:
The barbed words catch, sting.
I own them. And the wrenching stab. They’re rightly mine.
For it’s true: I had had ears only for the plink, plank, plunk of berries in the bottom of my bucket, the fill of blue, the rustle of the bushes loosening its sapphires.
The noise in my head went something like this: If twenty minutes of harvesting yields half a bucket, and if we’d like two cups of berries swirled through smoothies every week during winter’s heavy white, we’ll need to pick for how long? Then, to account for the gas: at 93 cents a litre, driving 225 km to this field of sweet indigo, and berries cost $2.10 a pound, how many pounds need be reaped to make this jaunt worthwhile? It was this ferris wheel calculating business, this warped determining if this was a day well spent. Round and round and round.
To my (pitiful) defense, at the fringe of my figuring, my picking, I was listening with half an ear, complete with obligatory nodding. But I concede: I was, as is too often the case, task oriented. Focused. Busy.
The Japanese symbol for busy is a slash through the heart. I am that: busy. Thus, (is it true?) heartless. With a soundless, hollow chest cavity, I go about, carelessly slashing into oblivion (what a nauseating thought) the hearts that beat around me. So we all grow hard and lifeless.
Every heart that pulses on this whirling rock ---thrum, thrum, thrum— sirens to the world to lean in, wait… and listen. Hearts beat to be heard. What throbs under a ribcage, the thrust of all that is alive and warm, awaits a cochlear and soul stethoscope. And, (dare I confess such ugliness?), I am busy. I don’t have time. I am, sadly, on my way to somewhere, something, fast. I am the oblivious one rushing on by.
But even at this pace, I hear the question calling after: Since when is this the way of God? From somewhere inside comes the answer: It isn’t.
The God of the Psalms is the Listening God. He is the God who hears. David howls to the heavens. His ache surges, his pain boils, his seething agony erupts. And God hears. The God of the galaxy, who counts hairs and sparrows, pauses, leans low, and presses His warm heart into his. He attends. God listens.
It’s why we cherish the Psalms. Someone—The Someone—witnesses our being, hears the swoosh of our heart, listens to the feelings, hot and salty, coursing through our veins. To go God's way is to do it God's way: God-followers are listeners. They pause and listen; really listen.
There, bracketed by rows of blueberry bushes, my two ears were, in the most technical sense, listening. But I need a third ear. A soul eardrum. A heart that isn’t slashed and slashing in it’s wildly beating busyness. A soul with ears.
The next morning brings sun’s warm rays and a card on my pillow, a greeting in the tentative scrawl of a six-year-old. The day brings a birthday and the tradition of a family going-away day. I smile at the drawn cake with its candles of raging fire…then open the lovingly cut, cock-eyed card to read, “Wher ar you goin?”
Exactly.
Little Levi wants to know where we will go to celebrate the gift of living. But the voice of God speaks in these pencil scratchings, asking. Here, before the day begins, I hear Him in the quiet. Where exactly are you rushing to again with this life of yours? Where are you going to so fast? This busyness that’s slashing this heart, all hearts. That’s chipping and cracking this gift of life. Where is it taking you?
The words of a martyred Russian priest point where I should go:
“The good news of Christ was preceded by a call to repentance…and the very first word of Jesus’ teaching was “Repent.” Remember that in Hebrew this word means ‘turn around,’ ‘Turn away from the wrong road.’ While in the Greek text of the Gospels, it is rendered by an even more resonant word, metanoite, in other words, rethink you life. This is the beginning of healing. Repentance is…a re-evaluation leading to action…The abscess must be lanced, otherwise there will be no cure.”
This tender third ear, still new and curled, hears the first words of Jesus’s teaching: “Repent.”
On a birthday day, I rethink my life. It’s a good day to turn away from the wrong road, this deaf, heartless busyness. I want to slow, listen. And then it comes: But what if I get caught up again, swept away? Busy. Truth comes too, reassuring: All life’s road allow u-turns. Many, many times over. Turn around as often as you need to.
Yes. Keep repenting.
There it is, faintly. I can choose to hush, to fully, attentively listen, with my heart's third ear. (God grows such things in His people.) Yes, I can hear it: hearts, mine too, beating. Hearts that are heard. The rustle of deep things loosening jewels.
The beginning of healing.
The beginning of healing.
Lord? Can I have a third ear, a heart ear to listen like You do? I repent of my soul-deafness. I forsake heart-killing busyness. I rethink, turn around, go Your way. Give me grace.
More On Slowing Down, Resting...
(*Photo: Hope picking blueberries, kerplank, kerplink, kerplunk.)
More On Slowing Down, Resting...
(*Photo: Hope picking blueberries, kerplank, kerplink, kerplunk.)
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