rehearsal of hope
Adam reminds me, leaning in at the table on a Saturday morning, his face all open to hear, that everyone needs a good rehearsal of hope, that good words re-heard can refresh a soul. We all feel in need of a fresh perspective.
Adam has offered me his arm, and as I talk to him, I wrap my fingers around, just above his elbow, my fingers absorbing his warmth, and my Autistic son whose nervous system won’t let him love a hug, locks arms with me and smiles.
“Where will we be going soon?” I ask, because how many tired times can we hear him give us, hardly listening, a memorized answer to what he imagines will be the same old question? Adam never cared much for dredging up the past when the future holds all hope, and so, when he anticipates—predictably—only that particular line of inquiry, something like what did you do today, he spits out his default answer, always, listen to music, because somewhere along the way he did. Saying this requires nothing.
Let’s face it, when we get weary-tired, and our yada-yada has very little to do with intimacy, our conversations get tired and worn out too. We can all default to the used-up usual. Without the daily rehearsal of our living hope, we can all get stuck living and dying in the past.
What would you say if I asked you too, if I leaned in now and touched your arm with my fingers? I will pass through the waters, and God will be with me, you could say, paraphrasing Him, believing He’s making your Way. I will walk through fire and will not be burned.
Oh, how Adam smiles when I ask that question, not the what did you do but the where will we be, and his face opens like a window as he leans toward me. So here we are now, our arms a bridge, love attaching, but I can see that this morning what he would truly like to say in answer remains just out of his reach, locked up wordless and silent somewhere deep in his mind.
A lot of people with Autism experience apraxia of speech, which is the reason Adam’s words get stuck. It’s not like the words being “on the tip of his tongue,” but more like his inner voice shouts the words he wants to say but nothing comes to his lips, or so the experts explain it, because Adam cannot explain it for himself.
But anyway, it’s like this for all of us sometimes, isn’t it, that for whatever reason we forget how to name our hope, how to give it a body of words, how to articulate the shape of it. For whatever reason, the things we’d really like to say get pushed just out of our reach. Our mouths become dead doors, opening only to expose our emptiness. Sometimes, we just can’t utter the truest things, and we need, so desperately, someone else to supply the substance, to help us rehearse a testimony to the new things now springing up. Maybe this only enriches the command to encourage, because our good words can be a kind of rescue.
Ever since Autism moved into our house, we’ve been rehearsing hope, speaking right out loud all the good always coming, making expectant lists like watchmen. Adam wants a list for every day, some good reminder of the good he can anticipate, and so it goes when you live your life confused and unaware there’s benefit to pretending otherwise. When you know you don’t know, you hope more carefully in the promises of the one you know you can trust.
I read somewhere that the Middle French word from which our English word rehearsal originated literally meant to harrow or rake over land, and I imagined one of those modern cultivators tractor-dragged across a field like a broken jaw full of iron teeth. But back in the fifteenth century, the tool, which was called a hearse and which was repeatedly animal-dragged across a field to break up clods in preparation for planting, looked even more like one half of an open mouth because of its triangular shape. This is the truth, that without a good harrowing of hope, the weary soil of a human heart can get too clod-hard for any sort of new shoot to sprout.
“Well, we are going to Philadelphia on Friday,” I start, saying the words slow just in case something breaks through whatever hardness has damned up Adam’s voice this morning, and he grins wider, throwing full open that window right into his own heart. He stays quiet, only leaning a little further into listening, his body an eager ellipsis.
“And we’re going to go see the Phillies play baseball…
His body leans still more, a postural and, and he crazy grins, and his eyes sparkle. I can’t let go of the moment, of him drawing nearer to me in hope, because I love him.
“I love you,” Adam says, just softly, because these days only love seems ever easier for him to reach, and he doesn’t pull his eyes away from me or break the bridge we’ve built with our arms. He is hanging on my every word.
There is nothing Adam, who is no stranger to a loss for words, appreciates more than this kind of repeated anticipation. As we rehearse our itinerary, he seems to grow before my eyes, enlarged in every good way, like a cistern filling with joy and peace, with love and hope and strength, and I am thinking, isn’t this also what happens when we re-mind and re-new and re-hearse out loud for each other the constant anticipation that we will see the goodness of God in the land of the living, when those who can rehearse their hope in faith do so out loud for those whose words have suddenly dried up?
Encourage one another daily, Paul urged, so you will not be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness, and what he was telling themwas that without encouragement, the fallow field clots.
I am saying these things aloud for Adam, because right now he just can’t, but the joy belongs to both of us.
“And then on Saturday, we get to go see the Mets play, and then we’ll go to Boston and spend all day with Zoe on Sunday, and we’ll eat good food and be together all weekend, and it will be fun, Adam. It will be great fun. I’m excited, Adam. Are you excited too?”
“Yeah, excited,” he says–still open, still connected, still listening and leaning into me–this he manages, because somehow the minute I say the words they become easier for him to repeat, as though the witness I’ve made becomes a channel through which his own living water flows to nourish a planting.
I imagine that fifteenth century hearse bumping over the land, like an open maw through which the good words come, sharp and double-edged to break up the ground, an echo of His Word, still living and active, rehearsing the truth. God can and does use humble human mouths and humble human words to soften hearts.
He is still making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
