Midwinter: Learning to Listen

I was frustrated even before I could speak. So says my mother. Because no one could understand what I was trying to say. I only spoke gibberish, yet I longed to communicate what was already bursting forth from within.

Then I learned to speak. Apparently I would put puzzles together face-side down. My aunt said I just wanted someone to read to me. I told my mom I need to go to school.

Then I learned to read. I would get separated in class because I couldn't stop talking. But the teachers had little real to say, and I always made the grade. I would stay out on weekends stargazing with friends and looking up at the black night thinking about how words are like cookie cutters that divide up what is all one cosmic dough...

Then came college! Hooray! I was warmly welcome by professors for my incessant talking. I could glean the essence of lessons with no effort. I could devour books. Books about how language is like cookie cutters. Books in other languages! But I was disorganized and wrote essays backwards. I would stay up all night cutting and pasting pages of musings to understand what on Earth I had meant to say.

Then came graduate school. I went late. 28. I was too afraid to apply until the pain of not trying was more than the shame that kept me away. A refusal of the call until my heart burst. And guess what! In perfect fractal echo, my first semester in Spain I had to learn to speak again! And my second semester in Scotland I learned to read again and finally write again; this time razor sharp perfectly argued chess piece prose.

Towards the end of grad school, when the stakes were secured, I took two courses for pure joy which would become seeds of hope and wings keeping me afloat after the unexpected death of my brother three years later.

The courses were Middle Eastern Literature and Culture, and Music and Philosophy. From them I would discover a world of theology based in the power of imagination and the healing power of committing to learning to read music after years of abandoning my heart's desire and clinging to the false belief that I don't have the resources to deserve my dreams... that dream after dream attained was each time still a fluke. How many flukes make faith?

Permitting myself to take those courses or to apply to school or to spend so much time with my family between ambitions was each time a bet on the truth of the heart over the implore of reason. Each time a quiet triumph of faith over fear. I made those choices in the sparse conditions of all wanderers — with only freely given will and a compass not yet suresafe and resolute, but magnetized with a longing that grows stronger with each use. I was rewarded always just enough to know I was on the right path and to keep going.

So now, as I sit in midwinter, I am surprisingly patient despite having no clear path. I know I must continue to learn to speak and read and write — this time in the cult language of music. And I know I must dream again as before. Now, however, I see dreaming is the fourth archetypal skill in language acquisition: listening. An admixture of longing and hope. Faith in me. Trust in Him. Faith in Him. Trust in me. A bridge of clarion song built from both sides.

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This morning, in a moment of frustration while learning to read a passage of music, I looked out my window and watched as some 20 sparrows land on the telephone wires above my street. They paused long enough for me to see that they were in the same arrangement as the notes on my page and then they took off again. They were the same.

And recently too when listening, I heard us say "Keep Going".