Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Day 11 -- Voice on This Eleventh Day of Advent

Wow. Voice. How does one take an image of "voice"? I haven't looked at the #adventword2017 site for #voice as yet. Perhaps pictures of choirs and open mouths? I had decided to tell a personal story about voice, but I still did not have a picture for it. I'll tell the story and then tell you how the story led to my picture for "voice."

I did not grow up disliking my voice. It was only when I heard it on an audio device that I shockingly discovered that I had a slightly higher pitched voice. Inside my head, I heard a lower pitch. Not in a cavern low, just pleasingly lower. Since then I have learned I could train my voice to be lower pitched; however, I have also discovered that when I read aloud (even without learning how to speak more deeply), people enjoy what I read.

About six months ago, God took what I had come to be slightly ashamed of -- my girlish voice -- and turned that shame into delight. I was asked to be a lector (and have continued to be generally once a month). Whenever I read, I pray for God's love to flow through the words voiced.

One story leads to another, and I remembered teaching Shakespeare in the classroom. My students and I practiced changing the meaning of one sentence of a Shakespearean play by choosing to emphasize a different word in the sentence seven times: He, was, gentleman, I, built, absolute, trust. "He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust."(Kudos if you know the play.)

Voice matters in reading God's words as well as the actual words. As I sat in a quandary about "voice" this morning, I read this portion of the SacredSpace Daily Prayer. It was then that I remembered how my students and I used to recite Shakespeare's plays (the second story up above). Beautiful words to emphasize and touch my heart.


The yoke is easy and the burden light because God does not yoke us and burden us in the way that humankind does with one another. Loving God and loving others. My desire is that my voice continues to speak love in the midst of weariness and burden because God's presence, Emmanuel, God with us, brings me rest.

For some reason my blog works best when at least two pictures are shown so if you wonder how Mary and Joseph (and the camel) are doing, here they are as they continue their journey.






2 comments:

Becky LeClair said...

Oh Debbi you knocked this one out of the ballpark.
How I love your posts/blogs!

Deborah said...

Thank you! Your words of encouragement helped me make it further this year than last (I stopped at day nine last year). I thought the only person who might comment would be one of my students guessing which play the statement came from! ;)