Echolocation

Bats do it.
They send out sound and listen to the echoes as they bounce off objects. It's how they can fly in the dark and not slam into a house or a tree. The echoes tell them things.
People do it too.
They just don't usually realize what they're doing.
They send out a cry, emit a sound, and they want to see what echoes back to them out of the stillness.
Today at chapel I held Rose in my arms during worship. Her face looked into mine and I could hear every note I hit loudly because they smacked into her and echoed back to me. The echo told me that there was a person very close.
In all honesty, we talk, we write, to know we're not alone.
Blogging is a type of echolocation. Yelling is a type of echolocation. Laughing. Crying. We make noise because we want to hear a response. We want to know that our sounds, our joy and pain, are not vibrating into some vast nothingness. We want an echo to help us navigate.
In general, I'm a bat with echolocation issues. I send out my sounds but disregard the echoes and usually hit a tree or a house as a result.
We spent last week at the cottage.

We woke up to a world white and frozen. Snow came down intermittently for 3 days. Chubby flakes, bitty biting pellets, perfectly symmetrical miracles descended.
And in the hush of snow I heard it. The echoes.
And the echoes told me what I knew this morning in chapel. There is someone very close. I cry out to God and He echoes His response back to me through His Word, His people, His Spirit. My cries never vibrate into nothingness, He is the close face that they all smack into. And when I stop and wait, silent as snow, I realize how close He really is.
And He helps me to navigate this dark world.
I miss meshing with trees when I listen.

before



Not quite after, but getting there...