Interference!

 

She’s recording another audio book in her home studio, fashioned in one of the front bedrooms, using heavy wool blankets for ‘sound-proofing’. A couple of days ago, Mhairi sought us out to try to identify the source of a high-pitched whine which was marring her recording because her mic was picking it up. Don couldn’t hear it: (now I have ammunition when I suggest his hearing may be beginning to fail!) I could hear it; we thought it might emanate from a tractor in a field within view, as tractors these days are equipped with all sorts of high-tech which might, in fact, be connecting it to satellite transmission. When the tractor left, the sound stopped, and Mhairi resumed recording. We presumed we had been right.

Then, yesterday, she heard it again. This time I couldn’t hear it: (ok, so both of us are beginning to wear out). Doug listened and heard it: there was no tractor in sight. Then Don went into problem-solving mode and hit on the source: the central heating. When it went off, the whine stopped.

Whew. We could control the whine.

Sometimes my spiritual ears are tickled by ideas which don’t come from God. I set out to hear Him, but interference from another source spoils my understanding.

Fifty years ago, society began to slide into ideas of relative truth. ‘It might be true for you, though maybe not for me, and that’s ok as long as nobody is hurt.’ Now, well bedded-into the cultural consciousness, this idea has gone on to foster the explosion of ‘fake news’. Technology has facilitated algorithms which detect what we might think and then feed us that news in order to define who we are.

We have divided and polarised and hardened our positions. The art of listening has waned if not wholly disappeared. It has become easy to assume that we know the truth because we have read the proofs on our news feeds.

‘What is truth?’ Pilate asked Jesus. With truth right in front of him, Pilate didn’t recognise it.

I pray for a revival of listeners, a return to respectful discussion, a restoration of congregational understanding. Even as we are isolated during this pandemic, may we recover our humanity and learn to turn off those things which whine and distract so that we can hear what God, and what each other, are saying.