Do You Hear What I Hear?

   

blindness

Last Sunday I was greeting people as they walked out of church and into a beautiful spring morning. There were scores of people around me, spirits were high, people were lining up for coffee, laughing and talking.

That’s when Melissa walked up to me. I grasped her hand, smiled and said how happy I was to see her. “What a gorgeous day” I said. And she said, “Yes, I love hearing the birds.”

I stopped. My smile fell a bit, my mouth dropped slightly open, my brow tightened quizzically.

What birds?! I thought There are no birds out here! What is she talking about?

Then it dawned on me. Melissa is blind.

I was still holding her hand, and she was still looking at me through her dark glasses. Waiting for me to respond. In the silence created just by her presence in the midst of this happy din, I was quiet enough to hear it. It wasn’t just a bird or two, but a whole chorus coming not from anywhere but from everywhere.

“Thank you. Yes. The birds. I hear them.”

Harold Richardson’s Fried Chicken

“If I can do anything for you—anything!—just let me know.” You will hear that if someone in your life dies. We heard it plenty the last few days. Pam’s father died on Friday, and between the hour of his death and the hour of his funeral on Sunday, we were flat out. Pam was tired…

Giving Birth in Hospice

Pam spent last night sleeping in a chair beside her father’s hospital bed. He is dying. “It is like sitting with someone who is giving birth,” Pam said. “It’s hard work. It can be frightening—you need strength and courage to undergo this suffering, this ordeal, to bring a life to birth. And,” she said, “it’s…

Old News

Today when I went out to get the paper, I was smitten by the weeping cherry tree in the front garden. Its blossoms were like huge pink puff balls, swaying in a light breeze. It was May Day. The sun was vernally strong. But I was not here to admire a tree. I was on…

Everything We Need Is Here

The secret of life takes us into unbelievable paradox—literally. We cannot believe it. The miraculous appears in the ordinary, the eternal hides among the transitory, the universal lays in the lap of the particular . . .  and we can’t see it. That’s because in our yearning for the divine, we’ve always been taught to…

Find me on Facebook FindingYourSoul on Twitter RSS Feed
About the author

I’m a writing pastor, privileged to work among the people of Saint Luke’s Parish in Darien, Connecticut. I love this work. I spend my days with people who are trying to live lives of faith in a pretty forbidding world. I’m lucky—people talk to me, share their stories, nurse their doubts and questions, ask me how to find God when you’re so stressed you can hardly breathe. Mostly I listen, tell them they’re not alone. I don’t have many answers, but I love the quest. I sit in front of a screen and write my way to God. I never know where I’m going when I start, I just try to tell what amounts to a story. And when it’s true, the story takes me home.

Read more about David


Get David's first book, Breakfast Epiphanies: Finding Wonder in the Everyday.
buy sildigra