| Implants |
January 16, 2000
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To talk about implants is to risk being risqué.
You know what I'm talking about. Thirty million women in this
country alone who want to be drop-dead gorgeous have them --silicone
enhancements, augmentations, enlargements. Some, notably Pamela
Anderson Lee, in extraordinary moments of sanity, have them removed.
Not all implants, however, are purely cosmetic.
Today, biomedical technology can provide retinal implants,
artificial corneas, vocal implants, not to speak of
entire organ implants -- not transplants, but artificial implants
-- the heart, for example.
One of the most successful implants is the controversial cochlear
implant -- a device which, when implanted inside the human
skull, connected with tiny wires to the cochlear canal in the
inner ear, then fastened to an externally placed
microphone, allows a sort of hearing for the
hearing-impaired.
The cochlear implant gives the deaf ears to hear, but with it, can
they listen?
That's the question asked about the controversial implant,
especially when used on children and profoundly deaf adults.
Omer Zak, who is deaf, posted his views on the Web.
He writes that cochlear implants do not differentiate between
sounds, but instead amplify ALL sounds -- and this is not always
helpful.
Think of a crowded, noisy restaurant, into which you take a tape
recorder to record the sounds around you.
As you are taping, you hear several conversations, and
instinctively you listen to some, but filter out others.
But then when you go home and listen to the tape, what you hear is
nothing like what you heard in the restaurant -- it is raw, unfiltered
noise.
Machines do not have the capacity to filter sounds.
Cochlear implants provide this sort of hearing for those who
avail themselves of it, but it often takes up to 12 years of
intensive and regular therapy to make some sense of the noise
picked up using the implants.
In other words, the cochlear implant might help the deaf to hear by
creating sensation, but it may not improve their listening.
Sensation is not perception. Hearing is not listening.
But what if ... what if ... what if ... as
technology advances, the cochlear implant develops into a device
that can not only receive sensation and allow hearing, but
provide perception and listening as well? What if it made
real listening possible? Might that not be helpful?
And what if a similarly advanced device existed for the SPIRITUALLY
listening-impaired?
Guess what? It does.
In today's text, hearing isn't Samuel's problem -- listening is.
He can hear, but he can't listen.
He can sense, but he can't perceive.
The boy hears and responds the best that he can, but he
responds wrongly -- not because he hears wrongly, but because
he doesn't listen, and can't listen, because he doesn't know
how to listen, because he lacks the tools to listen.
At the end of the story, dim-sighted Eli says in effect to the boy,
"It must be God calling you!"
It is an Ah-hah moment for the boy...
On account of that insight, old Eli reaches down within himself
and suggests something different... explaining to the boy a
helpful tool, a holy gadget absolutely guaranteed to broaden his
bandwidth, to tune his soul's holy ear right into the Divine sound
wave.
As a sort of fine-tuned frequency adjuster, the Eli Implant
provides the essential spiritual bandwidth reception for
everybody, anybody -- even young Samuel -- not
just to hear God's voice but to distinguish it from among all the
background noises, all the honks and busy toots of life
so that he, so that we, might listen to God's voice spoken to
him, to us.
Often we hear well enough, but there's too much of life's
hullabaloo, too much internal cerebral or external doings, to
listen carefully.
Communication specialists call this concatenation that impairs
our ability to hear the message, "noise,"
and it comes in a variety of forms. Perhaps we do not hear what
someone is saying to us because of cultural noise.
We can't relate to someone's cultural background,
and we are irritated at the heavily inflected accent that makes it
difficult to understand him or her, or even someone who
speaks a different syntax gets shut off completely.
Perhaps we turn a deaf ear to people because of
environmental noise.
The room is so hot and stuffy, it is difficult to keep listening.
Soon we give up and allow our minds to wander off.
We may turn off because of sociological noise.
We are in a different social place than our speaker, and we have
difficulty connecting with him or her on the same level.
We may turn off because of emotional noise. We are
so stressed that there is no point in even attempting to
listen or be in conversation.
We may turn off because of intellectual noise. We so
strongly disagree with what the speaker is saying that we simply shut
down and refuse to listen further.
The point is that there is nothing wrong with the physiological
hearing apparatus, but there is often psychological noise which
prevents us from hearing.
Nor is there anything wrong with the spiritual inner ear which God
has given us, but there is a problem with our ability to filter out
the worldly, secular and selfish noise that prevents us from hearing
the Spirit of God.
Careful and attentive listening to the Good News of God, to the
voice of God spoken to us, is what Jesus had in mind when he often
enough asks us, "Do you have ears [to hear], and fail to
[listen]?"
(Mark 8:18).
Paying attention to God's voice, really listening to what is
being said, is difficult when our ears and minds are cluttered
with the honks and hoots, the toots and beauty and
the bothers of life.
I stayed on vacation this week until Thursday.
Wednesday night our infant got us up at 3:30am. I couldn't go
back to sleep.
Too much to think about. I'd been out of the office for 2
weeks essentially...and surely there were a ton of e-mails to
answer, a pile of letters to write, a soul talk to
prepare, phone calls to make, people to see,
things to do.
I was unable to be where I was... I wasn't in bed sleeping in
peace... I was already at work, anticipating, ... I caught
myself and tried to calm myself down.
Tried to think about other things...
Tried to pray...
Who has the time or the tools to calm the din of sound inside and
outside our heads, to quiet the muddle and muscling of our thoughts
and of life to say to God:
Here I am, I am listening?
Maybe if you don't have the tools or the time, maybe if life is
too busy and noisy then maybe, just maybe, The Eli
Implant is for you!
But what is it? It's seven simple words of prayer,
"Speak, LORD, for your servant is
listening."
It's a request that God help you to hear what she has to say --
hear her still, small voice among the many other competing voices
in a sound-saturated society.
It's a conscious and concerted effort to tune out the
distracting babble of billions of fellow Beings trying to tell you
what's important, and tune in the divine bandwidth of Almighty
God.
It's a prayer that you and your fellow believers -- like
dim-sighted Eli -- will be able really to listen to the Lord, and
determine together what he is calling his people to do and to be
today.
Virtually everybody and anybody can hear God's voice, but few
choose to listen.
After all, who has the time? Who has the temperament? Who has
the tools?
You do.
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