The Callback

The Divine passed through, 

and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains

 and broke the rocks in pieces before the Divine,

 but the Divine was not in the wind; 

and after the wind an earthquake, 

but the Divine was not in the earthquake; 

and after the earthquake a fire, 

but the Divine was not in the fire; 

and after the fire a still small voice.

Suddenly a voice came, and said, 

“What are you doing here, my child?”

1 Kings 19:11-13 Paraphrased

I've been wondering lately about what's next for me. What am I doing here? I'm finding that I don't fit into my dreams anymore. The person I want to be, the person I am, and the life I wanted to live are at odds with each other. Picking a new path feels constricting. Every direction feels too small, because it means walking away from everything that was up until now. I've been looking for some great sign in the breaking and wind and fire. Something to tell me what to do, so I can release the anxiety of deciding for myself.

Instead I keep finding a still, small voice. A callback. It's that feeling you've known before, the echo that keeps repeating over and over throughout your life. A moving mantra. It is that which has not yet happened, yet points to all that has happened up to this point. It wraps its arms around your story. The entire story.

It is the one Truth I can hold onto when nothing else makes sense.
You could call it the callback...
Elijah calls it the still small voice...
Paul Tillich calls it the Ground of Being...
Gerald Manley Hopkins calls it the Golden Echo...
I boldly choose to say it's God...

So I'll stop trying to make a decision. Instead I'll decide to be fully awake, listening and loving and living. Eyes wide at all times- looking for the golden echo, listening for the callback, living for the Ground of Being. Knowing with that deep inner knowing that it is so much more than I could ever plan or hope for.

Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,

And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver

Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death

Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, 
beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.

See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair

Is, hair of the head, numbered.

Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould

Will have waked and have waxed 
and have walked with the wind what while we slept,

This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold

What while we, while we slumbered.

O then, weary then why

When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,

Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept

Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder

A care kept.—Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.—

Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.—Yonder, 
yes yonder, yonder,

Yonder.

-Gerald Manley Hopkins

Section of The Golden Echo