I was listening...

I am listening….
The full moon night light poured in through the windows of our bedroom as I lay in bed listening to Rufus the Basset Hound bay. It was his “I think I see and smell something” bark… one bark that ends on a shrill up note followed by two regular barks. I listened to the night sounds in between barks and heard nothing out of the ordinary. After a few minutes Michael got up and called Rufus in to the house. He had been sleeping on Barney’s old bed outdoors so we had left him outside last night to enjoy the moonlight.
I walk out on the back porch and see Junie B and Dixie standing at the gate. As I come down the steps, they speak to me. Junie B has a wonderful throaty nicker, a Greta Garbo voice that brings a smile to my face. I carry them a treat and rub their faces. They have been eating too much clover and are drooling like faucets. When Dixie is nervous or frightened, she snorts and huffs. Sometimes like a child, she plays at being afraid. She gives voice to those feelings and I listen, look around to see what is happening. It is a visiting dog, one she does not know, and she is giving notice.
My mother calls. Uncle Harold is very ill, his third heart attack, and she is so worried. Aunt Peg is coming for a visit. She is going to get her son to drive her to the farm and the two sisters will have another time to be together. Callie, my daddy’s cat is missing, and she is worried about what might have happened to the old girl. Mama’s cold and cough are hanging on and as I listen to her, I worry about whether or not she should see a doctor.
The red tailed hawk swings in wide circles above my head slicing the air with his sharp keening cry. I look up and listen as he searches for food from above. There are rabbits aplenty this year as so he need not look at our chickens. He is a beautiful bird flying with an economy of motion that is an aerial dance.
A Mary Oliver poem, “Days”, ends this way… (excuse the spacing)
Whatever it was I was supposed to be this morning-whatever it was I said I would be doing-
I was standing at the edge of the field- I was hurrying through my own soul, opening its dark
doors- I was leaning out; I was listening.
So much of my life has been spent listening. I sit in silence and hear the sound track of my life filled with the voices from long ago. There was so much I missed listening the first time and I hear more clearly now the love in my father’s voice, the fear in my sister’s voice, the sheer joy in my grubby young son’s voice, the pride in my daughter’s voice as she walks to school alone for the first time, the independent streak a mile wide in another daughter’s voice as she pushes my hand away from brushing her hair, my husband’s voice rumbling a bass accompaniment to our everyday living. And underneath, around and above, always there is the sound of God’s presence in my world. Sometimes the sound is silence and in the silence, if I listen, I can hear God pass by.
Today, God, I want to lean out and listen. I want to hear your voice in the voices around me and in the sounds of your creation. Give me an ear to hear, O Lord and incline your ear towards me. Please?