The Sauntering Pilgrim

Today I confess openly what I’ve never told anyone directly, not a counselor or spiritual director, nor my ordination committee, nor Bishop Miller or any bishop, nor any church council. I came close to telling Pastor Jeff, but so far he has not spilled the beans. But today I confess to you: I hear voices. More particularly, I hear God’s voice, or at least I listen for it, and once in a while I believe I hear it whisper to me. Now before you start thinking, “Aha! Dissociative identity disorder,” let me assure you I’m in good company.

During an interview, Anthony Hopkins once heard a voice say to him in his head, “Who do you think you are? You’re just an actor, what do you know about anything?” Freud often heard his name called by “an unmistakable and beloved voice.” Gandhi, Joan of Arc, and William Blake heard voices. An inner voice helped Socrates avoid mistakes. And Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, once excused himself for turning in a chapter late, saying his guardian angel had appeared and stayed to talk.

Jesus heard God’s voice after his baptism (Mark 1:11), and St. Paul at his conversion heard the voice of the risen Christ (Acts 9:4). Young Samuel heard God’s voice in a dream (1 Sam. 3:1-18). The great prophets heard God’s voice: as a youth, Jeremiah heard God call him (Jer. 1:4ff); Isaiah both heard and saw God in his famous vision in the temple (Isa. 6:1-13); and Ezekiel heard a voice that stood him on his feet and sent him with a divine message to his people Israel (Ezek. 1:4–3:27, esp. 2:1-5).

Spooky? Maybe. Dramatic? Sometimes. But hearing God’s voice is not always a Stephen King or Stephen Spielberg kind of experience. In fact, I believe it’s rarely so. More often, the experience is like that of Elijah, who heard God’s voice in “a sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:11-12), so subtle you might miss it altogether if you’re not paying close attention.

Thomas Merton, who devoted his life to listening to God, wrote that nothing can be said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. And the wind in the pine trees is more likely to be where God’s voice itself is heard. Someone else – I don’t know who – wrote, “My Creator spoke in flowers today. I was waiting on words, so I almost missed the conversation.”

Every day, every moment, with every breath, God speaks to us. “Day to day pours forth speech,” the psalmist wrote, “and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words;” yet their voice is heard throughout the earth (Ps. 19:2-4). “Ask the animals, and they will teach you,” Job knew enough to say; “the birds of the air, and they will tell you.” The plants of the earth and the fish of the sea will speak truth and wisdom to you (Job 12:7-8). Voices of God.

Presbyterian minister, preacher, and theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “God speaks to us, I would say, much more often than we realize or than we choose to realize. Before the sun sets every evening, [God] speaks to each of us in an intensely personal and unmistakable way. [God’s] message is not written out in starlight, which in the long run would make no difference; rather it is written out for each of us in the humdrum, helter-skelter events of each day; it is a message that in the long run might just make all the difference” (Secrets in the Dark).

Sheryl hears God’s voice daily in her prayer time, on her walks with the dogs, in her gardens, and in contemplating Sylvie, the big silver maple in our back yard. She hears God’s voice in the love she gives and receives in so many ways. God has spoken to me in the quiet shush of the Mississippi River, in the words of a friend on a damp, crisp autumn day, and in the dry rasp of cicadas on a midsummer evening; in the flood of pedestrians at rush hour on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue; and in the surprise of members of the Monday Morning Bible Study Class when they discovered something new about their spiritual gifts.

If we don’t hear God’s voice, it’s not because God doesn’t speak; it’s because we’re not listening, or we have forgotten how to listen, or we’re listening for the wrong thing. It’s because we’re so plugged into the noise that dulls our senses, we’ve become unplugged from God. It’s because we’re so focused on doing, we have no attention to give to being. We’ve lost the truth W.H. Davies expressed in his poem “Leisure”: “A poor life this if, full of care, / we have no time to stand and stare.”

If you want to hear God’s voice, the holy whisper that permeates your life, learn to stand and stare, and listen to the wind in the pine trees, or maybe in the hum of bees in a hive. Learn to start each morning not by jumping into action but by drifting without thought on the quiet waters that flow between sleep and consciousness. Learn to take at least part of a day each week as true sabbath, with no purpose to your existence except to be, in Mary Oliver’s words, “simply / one of those gorgeous things / that was made / to do what it does perfectly / and to last, / as almost nothing does, / almost forever” (from “Stebbin’s Gulch,” in Blue Horses).

Do that, and you might hear voices, the music of the spheres, the sound of sheer silence that stands you on your feet and leades you to speak one true sentence “with your one wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day.”).