i have a vivid childhood memory from one of many trips our family took to Pittsburgh to visit relatives for the holidays: i climbed onto my grandparents’ bed, where my baby cousin was sleeping, and put my face right up to his face. i stayed there for a few minutes, without touching him at all. not long after, my uncle opened the door, just as my cousin was shifting around and waking up. to anyone walking into the room, it would have seemed like i’d woken him, but i was quick to tell my uncle i hadn’t been touching him or making any noise. he told me that i didn’t have to touch him to wake him up, and that even if i was being quiet, the feeling of my breath on the baby’s face could be strong enough to wake him. and so i climbed off the bed and asked Roy to do it to my face later to see if he was right, and he was.
my friend Aaron and i met in Portland last week for a brief, beautiful visit. on our last morning there, we woke up early to explore Maine’s rocky coast. we drove slowly through a heavy fog, unable to see much beyond the hood of our car. we eventually parked along the edge of the road, close to where we thought the path to the ocean might be. we couldn’t see the water through the thick, white air, but we could taste salt and smell salt and we knew we were close. Aaron noticed the sound of a boat’s motor turning in the water, and we decided to use our ears to follow the sound down, drinking in gulps of salted air along the way.
i’m shuffling ordination paperwork from my right hand to my left and just can’t see where i’m going with it. i’d be happy to quit and feign a certain amount of fogginess to the world or to myself about my own calling, but i’d still have to face that nagging tug of god inside of me. we try to outrun the noise or pretend to be asleep to what’s humming against our faces. but that the ocean gives us another way to find it when the air is so thick we can’t see through it, encourages me to keep going, even when i’m not sure how to go.
any kind of discernment involves a lot of listening for the motor and opening our eyes wide to the breath of god on our faces. walking down the rocky path to the water, i grabbed Aaron’s hand, and holding it, i felt the heat of our soft palms touching and knew then that the sound of the beating motor is not separate from us, but in us, of us, about us, all around us. no amount of fog can quiet the god in us because it’s always as close as us, and is that immutable sound of alive things being alive.
and so we made our way to the water this way: listening for the sounds that heat us up and make us alive, getting our faces wet with fog, praising god for each other and for that sticky gift of a morning.
