Tune in.

Sometimes I don't want to hear anything. I want to hear nothing at all, not one sound, save for the voice of my Father. 

The air was crisp, the sun warm, the fallen leaves yellow when I stuffed my ipod headphones further into my ear and turned up a song of praise just loud enough to make everything I saw walking down the street appear as if it were in a music video... on purpose.

I needed an escape.  The noise of this world was a snare to me.

There went a bus I didn't even hear. Some people squabling in Chinese I also couldn't hear. Sellers hawking their wares, bicycles clanging, students giggling, billard balls clacking, cows lowing, leaves crunching, noodles being slurped... and I... couldn't hear any of it. To my delight.

Sometimes even your ears are weary.

So when I crossed the street and began my walk of escape down a baren dirt road next to the ditch near our school I wished with all my might I had taken a different turn. Because even though I could only see it, couldn't hear it, I did hear it... somewhere deep down the sound rustled the tatters of my ragged soul. It was one of the tiny beggar children I have come to befriend, standing in the ditch, clothes torn and sodden, shoes off, and face bathed in tears, wailing.

I took out my headphones. And the torrential rush of life flooded my ears and nearly made my eyes water. I had wanted to block it all out.

When she saw me turn, cross the ditch, and come pick her up out of the lethargically moving water, she stopped crying. Her brother and even younger sister stood a little ways off near where her missing shoes were, splashing in the filthy muck. I buttoned the only button left remaining on her grimy shirt and turned in time to catch her older brother as he jumped up to hug me. Something about spinning a child around in the air makes the rest of the world stand still. I explained that I was sorry I hadn't brought any money out and so instead we squatted and played a guessing game drawing numbers in the gravely sand and wrestled a bit and then laughed as a single rubber boot floated by in the ditch and the older brother splashed dove to get it and stuffed both of his feet in. I asked them if they were okay now, invited them to go on my walk with me, and at their refusal I wished them farewell after helping them put their busted too small shoes back on.

I reached in my pocket to again mute the world.

But I pulled my hand out empty and instead, before I even realized I had done it, grabbed two of the bulging plastic bags held by the panting grocery market lady who I love who also just happened to be struggling down the street right next to me. She, so thrilled for the extra set of hands, chattered at me in Chinese that was far too quick to be comprehensible and while I was being mesmerized by the endless stream of what I may never be able to understand I followed her right into the army base. As much to my surprise as theirs.

We dragged the bags squirming with fish and loaded with cabbages back to the kitchen area, caused a bit of a scene when I, immediately realizing that I shouldn't have been where I was, decided to quickly leave and was commanded to just wait a moment by the dear woman. When she had been paid by some astounded looking men in uniform, she clasped my shaky hands in her cool, swollen, chapped ones and we walked back through the main gate, her chattering all the while and I blushing, where we parted.

Two steps later I had silenced the world with my music once again.

Only to feel my phone rining in my pocket. Nearly tempted to curse my other senses which had been betraying me, I turned off the music and answered the call.

It was my student who was away in her hometown doing her practice teaching. Her class was studying animals and her only request was could I please please just one time sing the animal song I had taught them? So there I stood on the street, next to babies squatting with spilt pants to pee, women in bright orange overalls sweeping the endless barage of garbage, a man with a bicycle cart full of miniature cacti, and the typical odd menagerie of life, singing softly into my phone so as not to attract any additional attention, 'Old Macdonald had a farm... e-i-e-i-o'. An enthusiastic 'Thank you teacher!' ended the phone call.

When the dump truck horn blared past belching soot a moment later I didn't even hear it.

And so the veiny, green turning yellow leaves cascaded to the ground, clipped from their branches by the brittle wind, and the sprinklers danced around creating misty showers, the dimming sun light beamed across the damp lawn of the park, and the grandmothers hobbled, young men on bicycles glided, taxis sped past. I sat on the haphazardly painted white metal bench and watched it all happen according to a beat that only I could hear. And it was all I could hear.

And as I sat and gulped in the peace and beauty of the moment I was in like one who had just escaped drowning I realized that even when I had my music turned off, somehow slicing through the noise noise noise, I had heard His voice: play with beggars, carry people's bags, sing to your students...

May it always be all I can hear.