LISTENING FOR THAT ONE VOICE

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter

One of the things I like best about being in the pew instead of the pulpit is getting to hear Helen pray The Lord’s Prayer. It’s fun just to get to sit in church with her in general, but I especially like to pick out her voice from the two hundred or so who pray that two-thousand-year prayer together on Sunday morning at St. Mark’s UMC.

Just think of how many voices have prayed that prayer, alone and together, in how many languages? And I get to pick out the one that is most meaningful to me.

I like to hear the massed voices, like to hear the two hundred sounding like one. Especially, though, I like to hear that one within the mass.

One of my favorite stories concerns the dog that got onto the field when the As had just moved to Kansas City, before they moved on to Oakland. At first they played in an old minor league stadium, before Kauffman Stadium was built, the kind of old stadium that was porous enough that dogs could get in. [1]

The dog trotted onto the field and began to run the bases, going to first, and then to second, and on to third. When it got to third, it just stopped. Sat down on third base. Everyone began to yell at it. “Run for home!” “Bite the umpire!” “Get off the field!” But it didn’t move. Finally the grounds keepers came out and carried it off.

One insightful dog-savvy sports writer noted, “In that cacophony of voices, the dog did nothing, because it could not pick out the voice of a master.”

There are a lot of voices yelling at us these days. Listen carefully for the one that matters.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721.

1] Of course, this could happen easily these days in The Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, on a “Bark in the Park” night, when people bring their dogs to the game. No, I don’t know why.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I tweet as yooper1721, because when I started on Twitter, I thought you were supposed to have a “handle,” like truckers on CB radio. I was a Yooper, and my telephone # was 1721, so…