Is anyone there?
Yesterday, I wrote about looking for my own voice (and you looking for yours), and trusting both the voice and the God who gave it.
But saying it like that, a question immediately follows, a question that a friend unknowingly placed in front of me this morning. It goes like this:
Trusting the voice and the God who gave it to do what?
The assumption in this question is that we are all "for" something, that there is meaning to be made of this life. To be created "for" something is more than mere utilitarianism. (As artists are prone to point out, wanting to constantly battle for the "uselessness" of art, the idea that art is in the world as all creation is here, for the delight and glory of God.)
So what are we "for?" And to ask with more direct, more challenging, and more disturbing clarity, what am I for?
I am sitting quite still just now, hands poised over the keyboard, waiting. There is a thought that's trying to emerge that somehow insinuates itself as being important, even critical. So bear with me as a I try to play midwife to the process of discovery.
Who is the audience, the audience for the voice? Maybe audience is the wrong word, but being a man of the theatre from way back, I can't help but think that way. Who are these assembled people gathering to hear a word from a voice that is about to come from your own heart? Are there any? In the end, is there anyone to hear and respond to these wonderings, these questions, these beginning attempts at answers, these stories?
Is there anyone?
Is anyone there?
Just now, this feels like the most fundamental question a human being can ask. There may be others, but the felt aloneness of standing in a wide field with seasons and years raining down on you brings the question on with unrelenting consistency. I notice other people standing in this field as well--thank God--but still, though we are together, their presence alone is not answer enough.
Is anyone there?
If the answer is the Existentialist's answer, the Atheist's answer, that indeed there is no one, to discover what life is "for" is dicey at best. The postmodern hook-in-the-mouth is that--locked in the eye glasses of your own cultural construct--you can do no better than make life up as you go, inventing meaning, fabricating reasons for all manner of social, political, and religious behavior, living practically as if there were some authority standing behind your choices, when in fact, all you're doing is pretending at a very high level. Which I am not scoffing at, by the way...this sort of living takes great courage and faith, though faith in what may be a killing question in the end.
What if the "aha" was that I know my own voice all too well, but my fear--perhaps well-supported by experience, perhaps not--that no one is really listening makes me shut my mouth? What if we know after all the timbers and rhythms and nuances of spirit and soul, but convinced of futility and loneliness, we simply wind down until finally there is silence, and waiting for it to all be over.
Is anyone there?
Yesterday, Dick Staub wrote a great piece on the release of Jill Carroll, the U.S. journalist who has been held in Iraq for the past three months. He references the loneliness and despair inevitably experienced by those kept in such captivity. When I think of all the people imprisoned for their faith, or those who are martyred in the cause of Christ, my little question--is anybody there?--looms very, very large.
So...we say God is there, and because the voice belongs to Him, and we trust Him to make it "for" whatever He deems best, then...then what? The truth is that I too often make the affirmation intellectually, all the while knowing in my emotional heart that because I cannot seem to feel anyone listening (especially those who I long to hear me the most--those closest to me), then I will give my voice to God quietly, silently, taking defunct vows of silence so as to not feel the pain of shouting into the emptiness, receiving back not so much as an echo.
Is anyone there?
What I really want to say with this post is that someone is there. God, yes, but that's what I mean. You are there. If you are reading this post, then you are there. There is an audience, there is a gathered people, and here I am talking to myself as much as anyone. I suppose I'm talking to myself as a writer, saying hello to an audience that is my reason "for". Truth is, I've been unfaithful to you in some ways, wanting perhaps a different audience, a better one, one that doesn't exist, and that I probably wouldn't recognize if it did.
Forgive me.
I'll write now. I'll write for you, for the hope of community, for the longing that each of us holds in our hearts to find the beauty God has placed in the world today, and to answer its call.
Is anyone there?
...You are...thank you...
9:40:15 AM
