Without Warning

continued

I was waked in the predawn dark by a shriek. I ran into the hall to find Mother sobbing in the kitchen doorway. I put my arms around her — the first time I’d ever done so. Her alarm had gone off at 6:00 as always, she said when she was able to speak, and she’d gotten up to start the coffee.

“I was tiptoeing,” she told me. “He sleeps so lightly, you know. I was trying not to wake him.”

It was just before 7:00 when the door buzzer sounded. I opened it to see Reinhold Niebuhr standing in the hallway. I sighed with relief. A fellow professor at Union, this renowned theologian would have the consoling words John and I had failed to find.

"Come in! I'll go get Mother."

Translator of the ancient German "serenity prayer," Dr. Niebuhr was known for his gift of phrasing: God grant me the serenity to accept those things I cannot change, the courage to change those things I can change, and the wisdom to know the difference. What eloquent words this man will find at a moment like this! I thought as I returned with Mother and John.

With the four of us seated in the living room, I waited eagerly for Dr. Niebuhr to begin speaking. A minute ticked away on the antique clock. Two minutes, while my expectation mounted. At last, with knobby arthritic fingers, Dr. Niebuhr reached for Mother's hand.

"Well, Helen," he said - the very first words he had uttered.

Silence fell again. Five minutes ... ten full minutes went by, and still this gifted speaker had not shared his words of wisdom.

The clock chimed a quarter past seven. Something remarkable was taking place among the four of us. As the stillness of the room seeped inside me, a wordless communion seemed to enfold us all. When the clock sounded the half hour, Dr. Niebuhr stood up and let himself out.

And still John, Mother, and I sat silent. A staggering question was taking shape in my mind. Dr. Niebuhr's silence - was it ... about God? Had he brought with him something about faith that could not be said? Something about presence? About being?

Our being here last night.

A nightgown.

A hug.

These weren't religion, these were ... just things people did. Was God those things too, things beyond language? For six years now, at Guideposts, I'd pressed people to talk about God. I'd put their words ­thousands and thousands of them - on paper. Could God be found outside of words?

Not until the undertakers arrived at 8:00 did any of us speak, and then only to deal with the logistics of death. Later, other words would come. Words of honoring and love that John and I needed to speak in their time. Letters would come from across the country and the world, even a note from Bishop Sherrill saying that he’d read the news in the Times and recalled tracing family roots the night Dad died.

The question remained with me, though. A question about silence, chosen over words by one of the great wordsmiths of our century. Two years later, silence would be the door through which I would step into the courts of heaven.