It’s so warm today. I’m working from the van with the doors wide open, the windows wide-open, the sky-light wide-open. I’m basically wide-open to the possibility of a breeze, or even a whisper of a breeze at this point. In the meantime I’m a hair-up sticky mess of a human, eaves-dropping on conversations along the promenade. There’s cool coffee van parked up near me that’s hugely popular. I can’t see it, but I’m having fun listening and imagining the faces-behind-the-voices I can hear. Instead of working.
People have a unique sound. You know what I mean. Their resonant fingerprint. It’s like a composite of many small things. Wine connoisseurs describe fine wine as a multi sensory experience and employ phrases like smokey with a hint of forest floor, notes of vanilla, silky texture on the palate. The unique sound each person emits could be described in a similar multi-sensory fashion: they move through the air in a way that interrupts its flow; their exhale emits vibrant overtones; their fingers nervously move against trouser fabric forming a gentle cadence that accompanies their journey from place to place. This descriptor, complimentary or otherwise, varies from person to person. Their finger-print sound is one you can both hear and feel, often evoking an echo inside us. Sometimes the tingle of anticipation, the warmth of a familiar blanket, sometimes the deep belly swell of dread.
I wonder if many of us are more attuned to the sound of others than we are to our own sound.
Maybe the Garden-time of Genesis 3 has faded in our ancestral muscle memory. We don’t remember that there is One who seeks out the sound of us in the cool of the day. Anticipating walk-and-talk company with love and longing. We’ve not learnt to see ourselves through love’s eyes. Maybe we have never experienced being seen by another person in that way. There hasn’t been a waking up of the memory that there is more. That there is a deeper and kinder knowing.
I wonder if this is why our own sound can get stuck. For me, it feels like this: I can still talk, and function, but when my heart is moved, and I want to cry, sing, or speak, I can’t release the sound. The swell of feeling from my heart moves up to my throat and somehow gets lodged there. As if it meets a blue ball of wool and gets absorbed. Impassable. It soaks up the sound of my sorrow or joy. Keeping it inside of me.
Pride, shame, loss, all contribute to stilling the spinning light He placed within us. Just like in the first Garden. We are left telling ourselves a story of our independence, our aloneness. Our self sufficiency. Our lack. Swallowing the woollen ball down till it sits like a fur-ball in our belly. Heavy.
I wonder if shame changed the resonance of their voices in that first garden. I’m sure He knew, the Lover, that their sound was altered. Even before they spoke.
I was practising a breath-work technique called bumblebee breathing when I heard His voice and pondered this.
*Bumblebee breathing involves placing your thumbs in your ears, and your fingertips lightly on your forehead and humming into your cupped hands. The curve of your palms and fingers like a conch, the vibrations moving in the inside the hollows of your shoulder blades, the cavity of your chest, and into your heart space.
I was holding my fingers over my ears and humming, feeling the release and the rebound of the breath. With my eyes closed, I saw not a bee, but a humming bird. The 3 move with many sounds. I heard Him say:
My dove, here in the clefts in the rock, in the shelter and secret place of the steep pathway, Let me see your face, Let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. (Song of Songs 2:14 AMP)
There it was, the hummingbird, in front of my face. Teeny. Perfect. Poised. Sparkling wings hold it aloft, not by flapping or folding, but suspended in position by wings that draw infinity swirls through the air. The sheer speed of the movement generates a hum. Resonance.
Hovering in front of my mouth, its shimmering green chest meets and mirrors my heart space. This place of counsel and contemplation and beauty. The Spirit-cleansed dwelling-place can contain so much life as He makes home within. Still we struggle to release all that is held in our hearts through the gateway of our mouth.
Over time, in areas of South America, plants turned their faces toward this bird. Its proficiency as pollinator noted. The hummingbird opens its beak, and a long transparent straw-tongue extends, drawing out sweetness and sustenance from the depths of the flower. Everyday they drink their body-weight in nectar from the plants. In return they are carrier and dispenser of the pollen in the plant, ensuring it reproduces in colour and life. A beautiful exchange.
David Attenborough calls them jewelled messengers, these teeny birds. I hum, watch, and wait as the message unfolds.
In the opening chapter to the Gospel he crafted, John-the-beloved writes this of Jesus:
The Life-light was the real thing. Every every person entering Life He brings into light.
Jesus the rescuer-redeemer rebirthed me and brought me into light. He did this, and still does this. Like a flower, I turned my face towards this light, completely changing the direction of my gaze, my attention, toward the light that created and loves me, that has blazed out of the darkness. (John 1:5)
I hum with Him.
Our resonance draws the sweetness up and out of me. The vibrations shifting all that is stagnant and calcified in my throat space. A song of liberation that pollinates the ground, sowing seeds and stories.
Your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. (Song of Songs 2:14)
Hummmmmmm…..I feel my body expand, that inner smile soften the remaining parts of me that aren’t already a puddle on the tarmac.
He loves the sound of us, you and me.
He loves us.
We all live off His generous abundance, gift after gift after gift. (John 1:18)
In the abundance, in Him, we flow. We live and move and have our being. In that flow we resonate, speak, and from that same abundance pollenate that ground we inhabit with the light-life. (John 1 TMB)
We can love the sound of us too.
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