I haven’t written in over three weeks. At least, not for this blog.
It’s out of the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks. What happens when the heart goes silent?
“When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.”
Time is collapsing in on itself. Space is fusing together. At the core of my heart burns a singularity of intimacy, a furnace heated seven times over.
Words fall short. Anything I’ve been able to write has been a whisper for your ears only.
So much has gravitated toward our hearts that they’ve collapsed together, yours and mine. Nothing escapes the event horizon. All I can do is send a signal, some kind of shorthand, from the singularity. By the time it crosses all dimensions to become these words, it’s so distant from its source, so misshapen, -
But, you say, so beautiful.
I sigh and settle into my seat beside Joy and Tyler on the blue house porch. Dust settles into our communion cups. Anxious resolve settles at the top of my throat as I try to form them, these words like Morse code, knowing that they will steer the ship of our souls’ encounter with each other and with you. Frustration builds, for I know that my choice of spoken words will either steer us toward a heavenly meteor shower or a flat discussion that skirts the edge of glory. So I wait. I listen.
The camera dies. The storm clouds roll in. I stumble over my speech to the youth kids. No one is available to film. The lens is cracked. I catch cold. It feels clumsier and stranger as the weeks stack: one, then two, then three. Is it a lack of capacity? Is it a hurried rush? Am I out of step?
No; I wait. I listen.
All I hear is the roar of rushing waters. It’s hard to distinguish from the crackling blaze of your eyes. To incline my ear and my eye to you is to be both washed and consumed. What is left of me that is not you?
Your voice river, your eye furnace. Both speak wordlessly these last three weeks.
I spark along, lifting my camera when I feel enough of your presence to have a knowing. But not until then. I wait. I listen. I behold.
Brad, Robbie, Kacey, facedown on the floor. Hummingbirds and rain in the valley. Birthday cupcakes for Kodee. They pass by without us recording them, without taking down their sketch for a later time. It’s just not part of the flow.
You woke me up for coffee and a sunrise outside the corn crib. I sat out there with you, content to leave the camera inside and cherish this together. But you said, no, go grab it.
I lean back into the sofa weeks later and try to answer Brayden. “What has Papa shown you about the film?” he asks.
I start, I stop, I smile big and sigh. How do I condense all of this?
It’s a rough cut. It’s cracked glass to let the light dance in new ways. It’s a conversation, a slow listening one, maybe an awkward one. It’s a film that’s a canvas. It’s a CD that’s a soundscape. It’s the place in between sleep and waking, where your Spirit touches ours with pinpoint precision. Where you come dwell in the spaces between words.
Where your power is made perfect in imperfection.