One day, on a lovely morning in May, I tried to spend some time praying and reflecting at Starbucks. I attempted, quite unsuccessfully, to tune out the jazz soundtrack, even a lovely arrangement of “Maria” from West Side Story, conversations about expense accounts and boondoggles, and complaints about finals. I read Genesis for a bit and then finished my feeble attempts to listen to God.
After a few moments, I picked up Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water. She described being tired and injured with bruised ribs from a fall. She was recuperating between lectures when she had this experience:
"One afternoon I had a couple of hours to myself, and so I limped to the sea wall and stretched out and closed my eyes and tried to let go all my aches and pains and tiredness, to let go and simply be. And while I was lying there, eased by the cool breezes, the warm sun, bursts of bird song, I heard feet coming to me across the water. It was a sound I recognized, a familiar sound: the feet of Jesus coming towards me.
And then another noise broke in, and I was back in an aching body. But I had heard. For a moment in that hearing I was freed from the dirty devices of this world. I was more than I am. I was healed.
It was one of those impossibilities I believe in; and in believing, my own feet touch the surface of the lake, and I go to meet him, like Peter, walking on water. '(p. 197)
I finished the book, grabbed my coffee and walked out into the equivalent of silence in the city: street traffic. Instead of listening to NPR on the walk to work, I enjoyed a few moments of quiet. Suddenly, a memory grabbed hold of me as I waited for a traffic light. Once, as I walked around the neighborhood near 52nd and Crenshaw, in 1991, I was tired and a little depressed. I was walking and praying on a pretty little side street when I heard the sound of clanking armor all around me. I stopped walking and glanced to my left and right. No phalanx of angles appeared, but I was filled with a sense of peace and protection.
I felt that I understood more of what L’Engle meant about hearing Jesus walk towards her on the water. As I continued to walk to work, I passed the music school office and the drone of a vacuum cleaner interrupted my solitude. The noise was jarring, but as I continued, I began to hear a faint melody that increased in volume as I walked away from the office: the sound of a marimaba, skillfully played. The music was coming from behind the blinds of one of the practice rooms. Maybe I am an auditory learner because the lesson of the day formed in a prayer that came to mind: "Teach me Lord to hear your voice. Help me to be like Mary and choose the better portion. Help me to discern your voice in the midst of the storm."
