A Feeble Tongue

One of my teacher friends turned a year older today. 

We've become close over the past couple of years. I think she knew that my ears were attuned to listening from extended use as a child who silently absorbed the talk of brothers, sisters, mom, and dad. When I was a child I was captivated by those whose virtue lay in their ready tongue, their ability to spin words so comfortably and release them with such ease, those who had no inhibitions that kept their words tucked away, safe and secret. As a woman, I've learned to talk when I must, to enjoy speaking when there is something to say, and to try to let words out when good may come of it. But I still find myself mesmerized by those so comfortable in their own skin that words come freely, whether their listener is young, old, boisterous, awkward, male, female, or what have you. I admire that.

Perhaps there is equal virtue in ready ears. These ears have heard some hard things from my friend over the past two years, about a son who doesn't know his way out of the 21st century, whose main escapes are marijuana, technology, and lies, about ailing bodies and wandering spirits, about life and death and a faith that only breathed for a few short years in Catholic school and left her with a nebulous, barely-there knowledge of a God Who is up there somewhere but doesn't really make sense. She prays to Him to sleep at night, but during the day her solutions are doctors and meditation and new age remedies and healing crystals.

Ears are not enough sometimes.

I say I will pray, and I do. She knows I am a Christian, but she doesn't know enough about what that means. She seems afraid of those who call themselves "born again"--she seems to associate the term with cults and disturbing backwoods traditions. I have yet to use that name for myself; her paradigm of what born again means wouldn't be able to fit me inside. 

Yes, I have ears to hear. But my tongue is weak. 

So for now, I pray. I speak what I can. And I try to give gifts that might say something, if only in symbols.