Listening

Help me listen

By Ted Loder: Guerrillas of Grace page 31

Oh Holy One,

I hear and say so many words,

Yet Yours is the Word I need.

Speak now,

And help me listen;

And, if what I hear is silence,

 Let it quiet me,

Let it disturb me,

Let it touch my need,

Let it break my pride,

Let it shrink my certainties,

Let it enlarge my wonder.

Help Me Listen

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The desert air, moist from the rain, hangs heavy around me like a soft cushioning 

amid the pummels of my sobbing.

Tears of joy and gratitude and unshaped sadness mixed together and separate 

in a whirling of wordless wondering.

I anticipated that the poet’s silence would be from God albeit for His purposes.

I did not expect the silence to be in me.

I did not expect it to be made of tears,

a wordless forming of currents deep,

cascading waters from a hidden,

unknowing depth I did not perceive.

From my own silence, my heart overflowed; 

wave after wave, moving up and out,

in rhythm with God’s Spirit within me;

A complicated silence that caught my breath

 as it emptied me.

And, somehow, this silence of mine 

accomplished all of God’s purpose:

I am quieted, 

washed 🫧 clean, like the desert after rain.

I am disturbed, my pride broken, 

by the unexpected, uncontrolled 

shrinking of my preconceived certainties.

My need,

though formless and void and without sound, 

springs forth taking expression 

as it enlarges my wonder 

at this new thing done.

It is the becoming of Isaiah 43:18-19

“Remember not the former things,

Nor consider the things of old.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

Help me listen and hear and perceive,

O Holy One.

Anne

July 28, 2022

A Personalized Guerrilla of Grace