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| Pencil Drawing on Bar Napkin, circa 1598 |
Every time I attend a play, especially something like Shakespeare, I spend the first twenty minutes or so trying to adjust my hearing. Initially, it is very difficult to hear anything but the sound of incomprehensible voices. Eventually, with whatever adjustment is necessary, words begin to pop out, then phrases, and pretty soon, I am hearing what they are saying. With Shakespeare (whose image appears to the left), I think that part of the issue is that we come to expect a certain order to the language we hear. We expect the speaker to choose from a familiar palette of phrases and sentence structures, something like “it is raining cats and dogs.” Shakespeare, however, is playful and creative, and enjoys surprising us with distinctive words and phrases. “The wind pushed the rain as a dog herding sheep, gathering the scattered drops into a solid mat of wool driven through the narrow gate of the pen.” Prayer is not unlike that.
I have spent the last several months attuning my soul to the sound of prayer. I have been trying to get accustomed to prayer as dialogue. I had to figure out what to say, and I had to learn to listen. If I had to describe my prayer six months ago, I would say that I used to mumble a lot and then look at my nails and scratch a lot instead of listening for an answer. I would imagine that God experienced me like I experience most teenagers.
“Like, I don’t know what to do,” I would mumble to God, hands stuffed in pockets, looking at the ground, a kind of blank look on my face.
“Waa wa waa waa wa,” God would say, but mostly what I heard was Paul Simon singing Cecelia.
“What?” I asked, although it is not a question, it’s a deflection.
“Wa waa wa wa?”
I would look at the ceiling and stare with an expression that indicated I had just shut down and that nothing more would go in or come out of my brain, perhaps forever.
Prayer is ultimately conversation, and I have never been a good (or at least not a comfortable) conversationalist. Fortunately, there is loads of advice for those who would like to be, and most all of it says something like “look for something of interest in the other person and comment on it, ask questions, and listen.”
A lot of what I hear from God is still "waa waa waa," but at least Paul has forgotten about Cecelia and has begun asking pertinent questions: Lord, is it Be Bop a Lula? Or ooh Papa Doo?
