Trusting the Quiet Voice
Dear Friend,
One of my favorite parts in one of my favorite songs is this:
I see friends shaking hands Saying, "How do you do?" They're really saying I love you
I am not sure there is a line truer in any song than that.
Will you remember, whether it is this year or thirty years from now, to play this version of this song at my going away party? It makes me happy to think that even a few people might leave my send-off seeing, just a little more clearly, this gift of love, this gift of life, that we are being offered every single morning.
It’s funny the things that just seem to hang around the edges: the things you do not even try to hold onto but the things you notice out of your peripheral vision over and over, year after year. Sometimes the thing on the edge of your sightline barely registers, hiding in the brush at the edge of the field. But other times it might venture out into the open, if only a little, as if it might be a little curious about you. Then you take a cautious step or two toward it, hoping not to spook it before you get close enough to ask a question, or maybe even to have a conversation.
Do you know this?
Maybe it’s a deer on the edge of the brush or a blue bird: the one with the unmistakable blemish on its wing that seems to greet you on your walk through the park morning after morning. Or maybe it’s the one daffodil that seems to bloom a day or two before any of the others. Every year.
A few years ago a friend offered this, “Sometimes I wonder if I love only in the hope of getting more love in return?”
I want to believe that even then I recognized it was an incredibly brave thought to give a voice to. It was vulnerable and honest, and I admire my friend’s courage in speaking the thought out loud. It acknowledged, I think, how deeply we thirst for love, how that thirst never feels quite fully quenched. In many ways, I think, it is the question that many of us ask, or would ask if we had the courage.
My reply was something along the lines of, “Wouldn’t that simply add love to a world that always seems to be making space for more love?” I may have even offered this:
“The world is going to judge you according to your actions, anyway….your intentions don’t seem to concern the world all that much as far as I can tell.
Karma police? Um. No.
We live in a do-or-do-not world. Intentions simply do not seem to be the point. Love for whatever reason you choose.
Just love.”
This is one of those conversations, seemingly over and done a number of years ago, that comes back, over and over again. These days, almost every day. Like that bluebird.
And when it returns and asks again, “What of loving for the sake of being loved?” I do not hate or even regret the answer I offered to my dear friend. Sometimes that is all we have, I think. Sometimes the best we can do is offer our best love to the world in the hope that it might someday return to us because we are just that parched. There is a sweetness and truth to this, and I don’t reject that sweetness and truth. But I also wonder, and indeed, have come to believe that love offered for the sake of being loved resides at the surface of a deep pool that is continuously being filled with the coolest, most satisfying spring water.
Is it love to hope to be loved in return? Perhaps it is love, but also perhaps, only a sip of True Love. Perhaps when we love in hopes of being loved, we are like water skimmers dancing on the surface of a deep well and sipping tiny sips as we do. The sips taste delightful, but they do not ever fully satisfy. Maybe, or even probably, because they were never meant to satisfy. Maybe they were meant to invite us to the deeper, cooler part of the pool.
Mary Oliver’s To Begin With, The Sweet Grass is one of the many things that reminds me of this discussion. I commend the whole thing, and if you can read it, please do. But if you cannot, then at least this:
III ...Look, and look again. This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes. It’s more than bones. It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. It’s more than the beating of the single heart. It’s praising. It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving. You have a life—just imagine that! You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another.
Don’t rush past this line. Please. Stop. Read it again. And again until you can hear what it is saying to you.
It’s giving until the giving feels like receiving.
I have given my heart to many things. Perhaps too many. But one that I cling to is the notion that when we give and we give, not in hope of receiving, but without any expectations at all, something beyond-magical happens. We realize that we have been receiving the whole time. It just takes a while for us to recognize the feeling: to realize that the distance between giving and receiving is, and has always been measured in zeros. I think the word for this beyond-magical-thing is Grace.
I secretly wish that Mary had said it a little differently. I wish she had said:
It’s loving until loving feels like being loved.
No matter whether she did or did not. It’s definitely what I hear. How, after all, do we measure the distance between giving and loving? Also in zeros.
It’s fair to ask how I might respond to my friend’s comment today.
I think I would say. loving in the hope or the expectation of being loved in return is a great place to begin. I wonder if it’s where we all start.
But at some point, as long as you continue to love at all, you may notice yourself losing track of where loving ends and being loved begins. You will hear a small, almost imperceptible voice suggest that perhaps you are swimming in a Communion of Subjects as Victoria Loorz describes it in her book, Church of the Wild. That quiet voice whispers to you that the way we have divided the world into subjects and objects has been an illusion from the very beginning. A convincing illusion to be sure. But only an illusion, the very quiet voice whispers, and you must be very still and very quiet yourself to hear it and make out what it is saying.
And when you begin to notice it, a different, louder voice, also inside of you, will grow louder and louder, suggesting that you are just being naive. That you are sinking too deep into the well and the water is not just pleasantly cool but icy cold and if you don’t get back up to the surface, and soon, you will first drown and then you will freeze. The loud voice reminds you that this world is a terrible and a terrifying place, and it’s your duty to swim harder, and to keep your guard up. To stay alert to the all of dangers of this world - real and imagined. To manage and to strive and to protect yourself. It will tell you all the reasons that loving in order to be loved is the only logical reaction to a world like this one.
If you listen closely to the loud voice, you will recognize it and you know its name: Fear. Fear insists you have to control everything, have to be everything, and have to do everything to be worthy of love. It is the voice that insists you are not loved until you are lovable, and your lovability depends on what you do. It’s the part that insists love is transactional, and that you must earn every single drop of it, and what better way to earn it than to love others? So yes. Love that you may be loved, says the loud voice.
The loud voice is right. It is the only logical response. But resist, dear friend. Please don’t even try to argue with Fear. Fear holds the better hand. If you argue, Fear wins.
Nick Cave, in his November, 2023, interview with Krista Tippett, says it this way:
It’s extraordinarily difficult to argue your corner about these sorts of things against so-called rational, empirical truths about things. (The loud voice) has all the big guns. You just have a feeling or a softly spoken notion about these sorts of things. So, in a way, I’ve given up trying to (argue).
What would I say to my friend today? I would softly ask that instead of giving your heart to the compellingly big guns of rationality, stop arguing altogether and consider trusting the quiet voice that invites you to sink deeper, always deeper into love. Without guarantees. Without expectations, even. Simply be love, not because it will make you safe or happy, but because it was who you were created to be. Not because it will reward you with more love, but because you might discover that you are already loved more completely and deeply than Fear has the rational capacity to imagine, and that you have been so loved from the very beginning. That you are already loved, and grace is the eyes to recognize that simple Truth.
And maybe then, the voice of Fear will begin to soften, you will hear the quiet voice more and more clearly, and you might better recognize the gift of life in God’s truly wonderful world.
Oremus, and How do you do?
Chris
P.S. Kathryn and I have been overwhelmed by the support and love of this community - both online and in person.. Your words of encouragement. Your simple check-ins. Your gifts. Your prayers. Your willingness to walk alongside through some challenging terrain. All if it has been a source of strength and hope. My biggest regret is that I have not yet found a way to reach out to each of you - individually - to say directly and clearly, Thank you. We love you.
Loving without any expectations, is the gift. You my friend are a beautiful gift. Thank you for reminding us all no matter the question, love always is the answer.
I wonder if perhaps the better we are loved, the more easily we love?
I see, too often, the fear barrier you speak of keeping people from experiencing that all-in, cannonball tuck kind of love.
Thank you, as always, for sharing!