Waiting for God at the Audiologist's

I have been waiting a very long time. Originally, as a child, I was told God was already in the house. This was a lie. In the scheme of events that unfolded in the seventeen years I spent living in that home where God was not, this was not the biggest lie I was told, but it was fairly significant; I spent a lot of time talking to someone who wasn't even there. My younger sister had an imaginary friend named Jiffy who lived with us for a while, and she spoke quite freely to Jiffy until one day when my dad apparently ran over Jiffy in the driveway with the Ford station wagon, an irreparable deed that ended that conversation.

No one ran over God, though, and I spoke to God more than my teachers and three sisters and parents combined. God stayed up later. You could talk to God even when everyone else was asleep. In fact, that was my favorite time for the long, one way conversations that characterized talking with God. Because one didn't actually have conversations with God, no. One ranted, raved, cajoled; one pleaded, remonstrated, argued both sides convincingly and rendered both verdicts and appeals handily; one did one's best to dictate: After all, there was such ear-splitting silence when one stopped.

Sometimes I think this is why I

have tinnitus today. My ears are just fine, thank you, but I haven't had a moment of silence in over three years. This may be how God has chosen to come to me.

I thought of this today when I passed a group of about fifty people ranged on one of the outdoor stairways that flank our State Capitol building all around. One of them had almost certainly been a member of that now happily defunct touring group, "Up With People," because that is how they were arranged on the stairs and that is how they smiled as they sang. Really, no one should smile while they sing. It's sort of like peeing in the lake just because it's big and you don't personally know the children who are splashing nearby; it may seem inocuous, but it taints what is meant to be pure. Anyway, these people were waving large flag-like banners in a way that reminded me of the bizarre fact that rhythmic gymnastics are actually an Olympian event and they were singing as they smiled at me some line, one line over and over again: "His name is the highest name."

Before I was educated, I was naive. Before I was skeptical, I was, of course, totally optimistic. Before I was rational, I was a dreamer. I am still naive and optimistic and a dreamer, but I am also educated, skeptical and rational. But God has never been in the house. And so what do these smiling people on the Capitol stairway know that has so long eluded me after so many one-sided talk sessions and so many years of the mosquito buzzing in my ears?