Reading Aloud

I was the sort of child who learned a lot of words by sight before sound. As a devoted reader and hungry learner, I would submerge myself in literature far beyond my intellect and attempt to accumulate a vast arsenal of words that 'nobody else knew'. This often landed me in the embarrassing position of boldly including a word I knew well (but had never heard aloud) in conversation with adults to demonstrate my proficiency, only to have my pronunciation laughed at and corrected (notable examples include lingerie and Catholicism).

The written word is a beautiful thing -  but it's not the full story. For every word that can be written, there is a spoken companion - an Incarnation of the Word, if you will. The words of a narrative or a conversation on paper paint a beautiful picture; but in my mind, a story only comes to life when it is read aloud. Words burst into technicolor when infused with dynamics, tempo and emphasis; no longer little printed letters on a page, but something moving and impassioned and real. To hear words spoken gives them life.

Imagine speaking to a person who had spent their whole life reading books, but had never heard a human voice before. Although you might be communicating something to them in a language they knew and understood written down, they would have no clue that the noises you were making were the manifestation of that language. Only when we associate the shapes of the printed words with the unique sounds of those spoken do we begin to understand the fullness of language.

I think perhaps this is the difficulty we face in prayer. God is speaking our language; constantly reading aloud to us from the pages of our lives. And yet we cannot understand Him, because we've only ever experienced our own stories in ink. 

Sometimes I wonder if I've ever really heard my own story. I know I've lived the letters on a page; learned the structure of phrases by heart; familiarized myself with the spelling of even the most complex words. But no voice within the pages of this book can offer me what I most long to hear: the words of my story  brought to life by the dynamic, technicolor voice of the One who wrote them.

Without Him - the One who transcends the page - we miss out on so much of the richness of what our life has to offer. Without an Author, our stories lose meaning - they're simply words on the page of this Earth, uncreated and unchartered. Only in learning to speak His language - that is, our language in its audible fullness - will the story come to life. 

St Paul expressed beautifully that what we experience now is like a darkened mirror. Our limited capacity for understanding the language of our own lives means that we can never know God as fully  as He knows us; can never understand or describe Him as truly as He describes us. 

How, you may ask, do we learn to speak His language?

We listen.

Let your Papa, your heavenly Father, read aloud to you from the beautiful story that is your life. Let His voice breath life and meaning into the events that have never quite made sense. Begin to associate the black and white mundaneness of the everyday with the greater story being told by the Author of Love.