EYES OPEN

Road trips are fun.  You never know what you are going to see.  We were driving on the interstate and saw this up ahead. Interstates are often sleepily dull. But, this was indeed a unique creature ahead of us. We couldn't figure out what it was but it got our attention.We got closer and it became clearer. We were looking at a fuselage of an airplane.  Now I had heard all my life that one of the reasons for the building of interstates was so that should there be a war, these wide highways could serve as landing strips for military aircraft. (Not sure if that is correct or not.) But I had never seen a plane do this.

The further we went we saw the rest of the story. There were the wings for this airplane.

And now we had seen it all.  This plane had been taken apart and was being shipped by truck to presumably be reassembled.

Sometimes we are confused when we hear people make a remark.  We think, "What is it that he said?"  We hear only distant echo of what the person is really talking about.  But, when we ask questions, and when we see more of the picture, things begin to make more sense.  And when we inquire further, the picture becomes clearer still.

When we keep our ears open and when we explore more deeply what we are hearing, the chances of understanding another person improve considerably.  Making judgements on the first impression may leave us responding without clearly knowing what the other person is trying to show us. And when that happens, we miss some amazing things.

PROVIDING A BED

Listening is providing a bed for someone to dump out their suitcase on.” This profound insight is from my good friend, Gerry Janzen, Professor Emeritus at Christian Theological Seminary. Everyone who knows Gerry knows that, when he says something like that, there is more to come.

Gerry told me of his sitting beside a man on a long airplane flight. The man “spilled his guts”. He shared one problem after another. He did it with no expectation that Gerry would solve the problems. He did it knowing that he would likely never see Gerry again. Why would he do this? Why do we share our problems with others?

Gerry then told of traveling years ago with his family, first from Indianapolis to Vancouver BC. It was a 3 week trip. They returned home for 3 days and then traveled to Boston for 3 weeks. He said that when you are on this kind of trip, you want days when you can just dump out your suitcase on the bed and sort through the stuff. It always feels better when you put everything back in, folded and in some semblance of order. 

This, Gerry says, is what listening provides. It is a bed on which people can dump their dirty, rumpled and used lives, sort through their chaos to see where important things are, and then put it all back into the suitcase and get back in their lives and move on. When we live out of our suitcase, when we are always on the move, it is nice to take time to sort through our stuff and organize it. 

When you are sitting with someone and they are pouring out their heart to you, it may be sufficient to just allow them to dump. They might then sort it through, get some degree of organization, and find freedom to move forward with their life. What a gracious gift to offer!

WHEN VISION FAILS

There are times in our lives when we lose our way. The path we are walking becomes overgrown or we are dropped down in a wilderness of unknowing where the way forward is hard to see. Our vision dims and the future we once saw has evaporated. What do we do when we can't see a way forward?

I was once lost in a woods. I had decided to get off the path trampled by humans and follow deer tracks. Deer must be able to squeeze through more underbrush than I can and before long I didn't know which way I was going. I lost track of the deer path and eventually was just walking, one foot in front of the other. It was getting dark and I began to feel anxious. 

I could not see my way out of the woods. So, I started listening. I listened carefully to the sounds and I became aware of low rumbling (trucks passing on the road I had taken to get to the woods). That helped orient me as I knew that the road ran north and south. I listened more and became aware of faint music. Must be life in that direction. So, I followed the sound.

I think when we can't see a vision for our future, we might listen for a direction. Sighted people tend to trust our sight more than what we hear.  But, at times we can't see very far forward and we have to learn to develop other senses. We have heard that God speaks in a still small voice.  Maybe when we are scared and don't know which way to turn we can slow our panicked heart, close our eyes and listen for hints of the direction we might go. We may not know where we are going to come out, but at least we can take courage that there might be hints in what we hear. And if we walk forward with courage, our vision might clear and our future might become more vivid.

MUSIC IN THE DEAD OF WINTER

January 20--blistering cold.   Snow falling.  Trying to keep ahead of it.  The driveway scrapes under the blade of the snow shovel.  The whishing of the snow blowing off the shovel, back into my face. The scratching was accompanied by the background noise of interstate traffic a mile away.  Scratching, whishing, humming--scratching, whishing, humming.  

I stopped to breathe.  Leaning on the shovel, I heard it.  Music--singing over the drum beat of scratching, whishing, humming.  A robin--a lone singer who forgot to head south.  Singing its call, hoping for a reply.  And then in a tree near-by, an answer.  Another snow-bird enduring an Indiana winter.

I thought, “The dead of winter can be such a hard time.  The absence of green, the sun hiding for days, the snow carpeting the brown grass for days and weeks on end.  And we can be so driven to keep ahead of the overwhelming gray-white days of despair that we fail to stop and listen--deeply and quietly, to the song that whispers in our soul--the song that reminds us that life has beauty and loveliness.”  

I am grateful for shovels on which to lean and breath to breathe in and ears to hear a robin’s song--and for my own song that sings my own soul forward.