Last week we looked for Holy Ground in really seeing things.
Were you able to take a few minutes to sit and really look at a leaf or your
hand? Were you surprised? When I studied my own hand, I was awed by the lines
and veins. I was astonished to consider all the various things that hand had
done. There were the mundane things like cleaning and cooking, but also the
loving caresses and the hands held in prayer.
This week, let’s consider another of the 5 senses. Take time
to hear the sound of Holy Ground. Have you ever wondered if Moses heard anything while at the burning
bush? Was there crackling and popping like in most fires, or was it intense
silence? Did Moses hear wind blowing and the sheep he left behind? What can we
hear when we listen for God present on Holy Ground?
Not all of us are blessed with hearing. In the Gospel of
Mark, we learn how Jesus healed a man who was deaf and mute. Some people brought to Him a man who was
deaf and hardly able to speak, and they begged Jesus to place His hand on him. So Jesus took him aside privately, away from the crowd, and put His
fingers into the man’s ears. Then He spit and touched the man’s tongue. And
looking up to heaven, He sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which
means, “Be opened!”) And immediately
his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. (Mark
7: 32-34)
Jesus put his fingers in the man’s ears, which is typically
something we do when we don’t want to hear. Yet Jesus’ touch opens the man’s
hearing and gives him speech. Hearing and speaking go with each other. Those
who are deaf from birth have a hard time learning to talk because they have
never heard the sounds. If you go deaf later in life, you retain the
memory of sound.
Science tells us that sound is created by waves moving through
the air. Most of us cannot feel those waves, except with our eardrums.
Sometimes you can get a sense of feeling them if you are at a loud concert or
next to a car with the music playing really loud. Then you CAN actually feel
the sound.
This year on America’s
Got Talent, there is a young singer who became deaf later in life and is
able to sing again by feeling the musical vibrations. Then her muscle memory
could create the sounds that she can no longer actually hear. She is hearing through
feeling and is sensing the Holy Ground through her entire body. We might in
fact envy her that ability because very often we don’t listen to what’s around
us.
Sit outside in the early morning or late evening to just
listen to the sounds. Some are natural and soothing like birds calling or the
breeze through the trees. Others may be more jarring like the neighbor’s dog
barking or sirens in the distance. Close your eyes and let the sounds wash over
you. Feel the Holy Ground swelling and ebbing in the noises you hear. Is that
baby in the distance crying for joy or anger? Perhaps the dog is barking
because it is lonely, or because the neighborhood tomcat just walked across the
street. Do you wonder what the birds might be saying to each other as they twitter
and coo? What is God saying to you in the wind and other sounds?
You might imagine the sounds of things you don’t really
hear-like the tea in your cup. Is the steam giggling as it evaporates into the
air? Does the tea bag sigh with delight sinking into the spa of hot water to
steep? Or do seeds underground moan like a woman in labor as they split open to
let the seedling out? And does that seedling grunt while working up through the
soil?
What do you hear God saying to you in the sounds
you hear? Is God saying ‘take off your shoes for this is Holy Ground?’ To what does God need to open your ears?