Listening to God's voice, both heard and silent

Voice — to speak — to be heard — is a spectacular thing. Just try going a day without it. This subject reverberated from multiple directions last week — enough to get me thinking.

I spent several nights with a quartet of grands — ages 6-14 — while our daughter and son-in-law were in Alaska meeting their first grandchild. We watched a movie called Family Camp — which turned out to be a Christian family camp. There was an issue with a wife feeling like she wasn't being heard in her marriage — her husband having become overzealous in his family leadership.

She said to him, “I need my voice back. God made my voice, too, and He likes to hear it.”

The next day I had two out-of-state phone calls. In one I heard, “I just wanted to hear your voice.” In the other, “It's good to hear your familiar voice.”

Voice spoke again in a book I'd purchased at the incomparable Bonners Books in Bonners Ferry — hoping to do a read aloud with the grands which turned out great. I hadn't known The Original Bambi — published in 1922 — is not at all the “Disney zapped” version — but an allegory for suffering humanity told through forest animals in exquisite natural detail.

In the story the Jewish Hungarian author — both an avid hunter and an admirer of animals — writes a scene where Bambi is trying desperately to reach his mate Faline, whom he has heard calling. The “old prince” stag tells him not to go. Turns out it is not Faline, but a hunting game call. Thereafter Bambi cautions her if they become separated to search only. He tells her, “Please don't ever call me. I can't resist your voice.”

Another recent book I finished mentions voice in an entirely different way. In the “The Memory of Running” Smithy has an older sister who hears a “voice” that tells her to do terrible things. Smithy loves his sister deeply, and after one such incident he shouts, “I hate your voice!”

Depending on what I associate with a particular voice I can run an emotional marathon. Some voices evoke joy and belonging and security. Others bring pain and fear and ridicule. Some voices are to be trusted; others are not. So when I say voice is spectacular context really matters.

I remember reading that Helen Keller — who was deaf and blind — felt to not hear another human voice was the more devastating. How can anyone who hears even begin to imagine being stranded on such a silent island. To speak — to be heard — to own a voice that means the world to somebody — do I really know what I possess. Probably not — which is why voice doubles back on itself and calls me to say nothing and listen hard.