353---Ebenezer

God is silent with me right now. It's been my experience that silence is either a test or He's waiting for me to complete the last assignment. So then I search my memory for what that last instruction was. What does it mean to you when God is silent?

I am notoriously absentminded. That's why I write things down. My journal reminds me what I heard and what I said. That's crucially important to me in the silent times. That's when my mind plays tricks and I begin to wonder if I really did hear something or did I just make it up? 

Faith keeps a record.

Come Thou Fount, great tune. Second verse...Here I raise my Ebenezer.  Here I raise my memory of what the Lord has done.  As Morpheus would say, we are here not because of the road that lies ahead, but because of the road that lies behind. 

Faith builds a monument. 

'Cause eventually the lights will go out. And the voices will quiet. And what's left is the evidence of things not seen. 

These songs are my Ebenezer. They chronicle my encounters with Divine. Many of us do this. Isaac Sturtevant is a brilliant musician. I hold this man in high esteem. Here's a bit off his latest cd jacket: "...So ya, this music is pretty much my journal. Actually, I don't even keep a journal, just this music."

This is, frankly, an inconvenient time for God to be silent. In 81 days (who's counting?) I'm leaving my job and moving somewhere. I don't know where. And when I get there, I also don't know what I'll be doing. 

There's a new life coming at me, that much is obvious. And it's pretty exciting. Always been a person who knew what I wanted. I've heard people say they would do whatever they wanted if only they knew what that was. Do they really not know? Is it just easier to avoid disappointment by saying we want nothing?

I've worked hard at life. I'm not a lazy person, and this isn't some whimsical jaunt to find myself. But for all this working there are questions I haven't faced, some I haven't asked, some I don't know to ask. I don't know what I don't know.

It's been painful watching people process my decision to go. Some pull away now to protect themselves from the pain when I leave. It's like depreciating the cost of a copy machine or something. If they let me go, starting now, and spread it over 3 months, it will hurt less for them. Or maybe it will hurt just as much but not all at once. 

Meanwhile, I'm feeling a couple hundred people withdraw at the same time, even if only a little bit; it's still a little bit times a couple hundred. It's the sort of thing you notice. 

I understand it. At the bottomline, it's because they love me and are hurt that I have to go. 

Have to?  Really?

Yes, I have to.  

Suzanne wrote a quote on the wall one time about not going to the grave with life left un-lived in her veins. There's something so Dead-Poets-Society about that. Somewhere out there, my barbaric yawp awaits. 

Goodnight, Beautiful...

Goodnight, Strender.