This week has felt heavy. It’s partly that the air itself is hot, humid, and heavy outside. But there are so many things going on in the world at large adding weightiness to the week. The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. News of an influential young pastor’s suicide. Heartache for a gifted artist I’ve followed for years as she and her family hope, against the odds, for a miracle recovery for her daughter in the wake of a traumatic brain injury. It’s hard to sit still and focus long enough to write anything—let alone something that feels timely or inspiring. I find myself thinking, what can I do that is worth doing?
On weeks like this I want to be making a difference. I want to have quantifiable evidence that I spend my waking hours doing good. And what good is another blog post? It’s all been said. It’s all been done. There is nothing new under the sun. I feel a little helpless and hopeless about it all.
Strangely, though, it is also on these days when I have nothing new to say and feel little inspiration that my posture is most humble and my prayers most sincere. It’s on these days that I most readily acknowledge my weakness. Psalm 16:2 feels truer: “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.” And so I whisper prayers like, “Help me, Lord. Show me where you are and what you’re up to all around me. Wake me up to the love and light I’m not seeing. Pour your rightness into my emotions.”
And then, somehow and someway, he takes my faint and faithless prayers and does just that.
We have an older neighbor who has some degree of early dementia. She is pleasant and talkative, but our conversations repeat themselves. And so, shamefully, I sometimes find myself avoiding situations where we might have to engage in small talk. Earlier today, as I was walking up the hill headed back toward our driveway with Rosie I saw this neighbor approaching me with her hand up to speak. We had our usual discussion about our dogs and my kids/her grandson, repeating much of what we’ve talked about every other time I’ve seen her lately. As I stood there, with the hot sun beating down on my head, I was feeling pretty certain this was just a random detour in my day.
But then she started telling me about her son getting engaged and how they’re all starting to plan for the wedding next June. She lit up and laughed as she talked, clearly excited about this next chapter for him and her both. This was “new” news, and I know even though we’ll have this same conversation several times over between now and next summer, it brings her joy to talk about the ring, the dress, and the plans.
In those few moments I could almost hear the Lord say, “Listen to her. Lean in. Be fully where you are right now. I am here, too, and this is what’s worth doing right now.”
She may not remember our conversation this afternoon or tomorrow. But in that moment, maybe it mattered?
I ordered a book of Erma Bombeck’s most-loved columns a few weeks ago to have as a coffee table book. It’s called Forever, Erma. It’s not the kind of book you read in one sitting, but more the kind you can pick up every now and then for a little dose of her humor and insight.
As I thumbed through the headings I honed in on one of her columns called “The Listener—February 26, 1977.” In this one she tells the story of meeting a stranger in an airport:
There were 30 whole beautiful minutes before my plane took off, time for me to be alone with my thoughts, to open a book and let my mind wander. A voice next to me belonging to an elderly woman said, “I’ll bet it’s cold in Chicago.”
Stone-faced, I answered, “It’s likely.”
“I haven’t been to Chicago in nearly three years,” she persisted. “My son lives there.”
“That’s nice,” I said, my eyes intent on the book.
“My husband’s body is on this plane. We’ve been married for fifty-three years. I don’t drive, you know, and when he died a nun drove me from the hospital. We aren’t even Catholic. The funeral director let me come to the airport with him.”
I don’t think I’ve ever detested myself more than I did at that moment. Another human being was screaming to be heard and in desperation had turned to a cold stranger who was more interested in a novel than the real-life drama at her elbow.
All she needed was a listener. No advice, wisdom, experience, money, assistance, expertise or even compassion, but just a minute or two to listen.
It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.
She talked steadily until we boarded the plane, then found her seat in another section. As I hung up my coat, I heard her plaintive voice say to her seat companion, “I’ll bet it’s cold in Chicago.”
I prayed, “Please, God, let her listen.”
I needed this story. How remarkable that in 1977, some forty-one years ago, Bombeck observed the incongruity, {I would argue the tragedy}, “that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.”
In a book of almost 200 columns, I will have to bookmark this one because it’s the kind of reminder I need not just on Thursdays, but every day. Maybe my prayer to do something that matters could be whittled down to that one line:
“Please, God, let me listen.”
That may well be the best kind of good you or I can do all day.
Yes!yes!yes!