Reflections on the Whispers

Or maybe you’re an old man, with his whole life at his back, and you can hear eternity whispering down the track.

                                                                                                      – Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne has been a priestly voice for me since 1972. That first concert at Mount Holyoke College in the hills of western Massachusetts was just the beginning. In the 50 years since that crisp New England fall evening, Browne has penned words that have described my experiences inside and out, assuring me that I was not alone even in the loneliest of times. Sometimes, like the lines above, the truth he speaks stuns me and wakes me to something I haven’t noticed, or more likely, that I have chosen to ignore.

No one can imagine until you hit your seventies what a person knows when you are an old man [or woman] with his whole life at his back. We all fear too much to imagine truthfully what we assume is an awful place to be. Seventy is upon me. I find I am not afraid. I find peace. I am discovering that this spot down the track is a high place, like a place where after climbing up and standing, you catch your breath only to have it taken again by the vastness and the beauty of the view.

Peace? How does that happen? From this high place I am enabled to see that eternity has been whispering from beside me and within me my whole life. I’ve never been alone, even in the loneliest of times.

I wasn’t alone when my father died. While standing in front of the cage of the zoo’s pacing tiger, I was feeling its pain and feeling my own, and hearing His whispers that He was with me. I didn’t know it then. I was 5 years old. I know it now.  

I wasn’t alone when our first daughter was born still. Or when our third girl died before birth was possible. I did not hear His whispers then in any way I can recall. That came later when my mother died. The whispers came through a story my mother told a nurse the last time mom was conscious before she died. She had emerged one last time from her coma telling of seeing her deceased son, my brother Chuck, and her two granddaughters, which could only be Carolanne’s and my two girls. More whispers.

In recent years, there has been a steady march through my mind of people past and present. The people of the past have been old coaches, admired athletes, family, teachers, and friends. The different memories are always the same in an important way. Every character was someone who was present and saw, heard, and knew me. More than I could ever know back then. And now, with the fresh look that God provides at this point in life, their place and presence in my life is real, more real than ever before. As a result, and maybe it is the only result that counts, God is more real to me than He has ever been. He made sure I was never alone, and that I knew it at the deeper levels where such an embrace could do the most good.

And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew. (Ex. 2:24–25)

Heard. Remembered. Seen. Known. It took all my seventy years to learn that the essence of living is captured in those four words. The essence of living and the essence of being and the essence of being an image bearer and more.

It is clear now. The best help I can be to clients, friends, students, or strangers is to see them, be present to them, hear them, and know them.

Work hard at those four things; work hard at the process of hearing, remembering your responsibilities to relate, seeing and knowing the person in front of you.

Then pray and listen for the whispers.