give me ears that hear
As the day bends toward night, we fill the kitchen with simmering smells–bits of onion sizzling with chicken and pungent Indian spices, the roasted sweetness of Winter squash. The sky matures to a dusky persimmon, and I wipe butternut gold from the blade of the knife.
“Mom Jones, when’s Dad Jones coming home?” Riley asks, and I turn to see her, those rose-petal cheeks, that tumble of hair falling in waves over her shoulders.
“Well, I’m not exactly sure. But when do you think?”
“Ummm…” She adopts a thinking pose, tapping her chin; that dot of chipped purple polish on her fingernail rises and falls with her voice. “I don’t know.”
I raise my eyebrows at her incredulous tone, preparing to encourage an educated guess, since Kevin walks in at roughly the same time every day, but before I can manage a word, Riley pulls a chair out from the table to sit. From where I stand at the sink, plunging hands and cooking tools into the soapy wash water, she’s in profile. Her body makes a strong diagonal slash as she extends her feet and inclines her head toward the ceiling.
“God Jones, when’s Dad Jones coming home?” She asks without preamble and then waits, considering the ceiling, the glowing bulbs of the light fixture over the table. I watch her and smile, suddenly recognizing her posture as the nearest approximation she can manage to my own at the break of day, when she encountered me in the spiritual act of receiving; when, still rumpled with sleep, she had asked, “Mom Jones, what’re you doing?” I had told her I was listening to God.
I open my mouth to tell her that these are not the kinds of questions the Spirit usually answers, but I stop short, feeling chastened. Who am I to say what God will say to her? It may be that mercy will move Him to impress some certainty upon her heart, but even if He doesn’t, what good does it accomplish to impose limits on the limitless?
Suddenly Riley focuses on me, sitting up straight. “He didn’t say,” she says without frustration, to which I nod, turning my attention to the rinsing. Water cascades over the sides of the glinting bowl in my hand.
“Mom Jones, how do you hear God?” This morning she hadn’t asked how, though I had anticipated it.
“Well, when He speaks to me, He doesn’t use a voice like you’re thinking,” I tell her, carefully settling the bowl in the drain rack, “though He could if He wanted to.”
She nods, listening. “What does He sound like?”
I slide the washcloth lightly over a knife blade. The steel gleams, deadly sharp. How to explain? Communion with our triune God explodes the outer reaches of perception, words, cognition, until the testimony of the Spirit falls like an unmistakable peace. The moment resonates with safety rather than certainty, like the experience I had often as a girl when, scooped up in sleep, I rested my heavy head on my father’s shoulder. Even sleeping, I knew the feel of his strong hands on my waist, their solid strength on my back; the way his weight shifted as he walked. I knew our direction though not our destination, but I felt no need to open my eyes as my own feather-light hair fell over my cheeks. Knowing my dad carried me, I could let go and just go with Him, drifting more deeply into rest.
I put down the knife, dry my fingers on a towel. Patiently, Riley waits.
“Most of the time, hearing from God is like knowing something better than I know my own mind.” I say. It’s having certainty that He is and understanding everything only in that certainty. I think this but don’t say the last part for fear of using too many ethereal words. “Does that make sense?”
Riley nods, but I wonder if she truly understands. Riley likes lists and structure and literal language, and participation in the divine really overwhelms those things. At the same time, she relates to God with a daughter’s reliant familiarity, knowing nothing with certainty except that she trusts. Riley wants to hear God speak, having perceived His presence autonomically. And that perception is God’s gift to her.
She smiles and her laughter falls like water, like faith.
“If you really want to hear God,” I begin, and at this, she trills the quickest assent, “you need to spend lots of time listening.” I think of all God has taught me about being still, about wanting Him more than anything else, about teaching my daughter to take up the very best of life.
“How about this,” I say, grinning wide now at the chance, “we can listen together.”
