Do You Hear What I Hear?

by

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy

Do you hear what I hear?

Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy

Do you hear what I hear?

A song, a song, high above the trees

With a voice as big as the sea

With a voice as big as the sea

– “Do You Hear What I Hear?”* by Noël Regney & Gloria Shayne Baker

In mid-December, after several months of self-delusion about my growing inability to carry on a conversation, I got my first set of hearing aids.

As the audiologist began programming my devices – everything is programmable these days – I began to be aware of more sounds. I’m not sure I can describe them because I hadn’t heard such sounds in so long that I wasn’t sure what they were. The kicker came when the audiologist asked me for my favorite song. For some reason, the Beatles’ “Let It Be” popped into my head and then out my mouth.

Edel, the audiologist, promptly called up a YouTube video – everything has a YouTube video these days, too – and John, Paul, George, and Ringo began one of their last songs together. As I focused on the music, I began to hear background instruments and orchestrations that had completely escaped my hearing previously. Then Edel began to ask me questions through his face mask in the unique Mexican-cum-Cuban accent overlaid with Canadian and Boston notes that he had proudly described on my first visit. When I said I could hear both the music and his voice through the mask, he beamed.

“You’re going to start hearing things you haven’t heard in a long time,” Edel told me. “That’s why I want you to practice wearing your hearing aids in a quiet place first. Otherwise, your brain might get overwhelmed.”

That’s the thing about our sense of hearing: it happens in the brain, not the ears. For all their mechanical wizardry, those three little auditory bones – hammer, anvil, stirrup – don’t mean a thing until the brain interprets their vibrations. I think that’s what’s wrong with the United States of America; people are hearing sounds, but their brains have been so warped by misinformation that they don’t interpret things accurately.

Advent and Christmas focus so much on the sense of sight – Look! See! Behold! – that the equally important sense of hearing gets forgotten. And yet …

Had Mary not heard Gabriel’s voice, she wouldn’t have known that God was offering her the choice to help bring salvation into the world. Had Gabriel not heard Mary’s assent, there would have been no Incarnation. Had Joseph not heard the angel’s warning and fled with his family to Egypt, Jesus might have been one of the Holy Innocents killed by nefarious King Herod. Had the shepherds not heard the angel’s proclamation, had they not been enraptured by angelic choristers, they might not have had the courage to leave their flocks and seek out the newborn Savior.

Their hearing alone wasn’t enough, though. Mary was incredulous at first when Gabriel announced her opportunity, yet she interpreted the news and responded with an eternal “Yes!” Joseph heard a divine warning and interpreted its authenticity, acting to protect Mary and Jesus. And a hillside full of shepherds, unused to such heavenly music, interpreted angelic acclamation as a sign that something extraordinary had happened which they should witness.

I understand better now why Jesus so often concluded his parables with something like, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear!” Listening to the sound of something isn’t sufficient to grasp its full significance. It takes reverberation in the brain, lighting up auditory neurons, sifting through thought and experience, to turn acoustic waves into an idea that will initiate behavior.

Amazing process, isn’t it? One of our most priceless physical gifts, we hear things every day without recognizing, cherishing, and praising the miracle of hearing. Even more crucial these days, however, is how we interpret what we hear. This is what scares me most about our troubled times: the gaslighting-QAnon-conspiracy-under-every-bench madness that has infected our public life and warped our brains so that telling truth from lies becomes ever harder.

All of us now know someone – friend, neighbor, relative – who has formed a belief based on a false interpretation. Because of this pernicious influence, our collective ability to discern common good lies shredded like a battle-torn flag because we have developed the “itching ears” about which Scripture warns us (2 Timothy 4:3). We hear what reinforces our individual beliefs and we ignore anything that conflicts with it. We interpret nonsense as truth because we’ve heard that people who employ facts can’t be trusted. We distrust data because we believe we’re being manipulated by it.

Worst of all, the glad news heard by Mary and Joseph and shepherds so long ago – a Son is born to bring love into the world – has been replaced by lies that the Prince of Peace endorses gun violence, that the Wonderful Counselor advises us to look to our selves first, that Emmanuel God-with-Us is only with us if we contort ourselves into blatantly evil actions that maim bodies and break hearts. Maybe this reality partly explains why I waited so long to get my hearing tested; subconsciously I didn’t want to hear any more of what I was hearing, even partially.

Oh, yes, I’m hearing sounds I haven’t heard in a long time, like the sounds I’ve not heard since the segregated South of my childhood. I’m hearing cries of women and transgendered youths deprived of their right to control their own bodies. I’m hearing voices of workers who say they won’t put up any longer with the slavery of unfettered capitalism. I’m hearing the clank and whine of more military weapons. And I’m hearing people in power who are willing to do whatever it takes to remain in power without regard to how their actions affect the lives of millions.

I’m also hearing sounds of people inviting those who hunger and thirst to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. I’m hearing people welcome strangers and refugees into shelter. I’m hearing people marching for and speaking out in defense of common good. And I’m hearing people saying without embarrassment that they’re doing such things because Love came down at Christmas.

Most of all, I’m hearing, faintly and far-off, an indescribable music, a heavenly symphony of such joy and praise that I have virtually no interpretation of its harmonies. As my brain gets “rehabbed” to recognize long-forgotten sounds, I pray that awesome chorus truly is the sound of Love washing over the Earth, comforting, cleansing, promising all ears that can hear it that the cruel sounds of hatred, greed, and selfishness will not have the last echo.

Do you hear what I hear?

* About this song: “Written in October 1962, this classic Christmas song was originally a prayer for peace during the Cuban missile crisis. This crisis was one of the closest moments to nuclear war between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War.” – Genius.com

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011 with sponsorship from St. Stephen United Methodist Church in Mesquite, TX.