Voice lessons . . .

Saturday. Sofa. Coffee.

I am voiceless this morning. Okay, not really voiceless. I have a voice. Terribly low and quiet. J. D. Sumner without talent and therefore mercifully without volume. I forget how much I depend on my normal, loud voice. In the wonderful clatter of the Huddle House it was difficult to make my order of a farmer's omelet and wheat toast heard by the counter waitress. Conversation with the Saturday morning breakfast crowd was impossible, and I felt alone, even among the host of folks dressed up in their finest Roll Tide regalia. The best I could muster was to mouth RTR. I noticed mothers holding their children close to their sides and mouthing something that looked like "call 911" as my indistinguishable words were no more than muttering, so I decided it was better not to try to communicate any further.

I made a few more stops this morning, and learned that having no voice leads to invisibility. It is hard to get folks attention, much less communicate what is needed. At a couple of yard sales and the CVS I wandered aimlessly, feeling like Ebenezer Scrooge as he viewed his life without being able to be heard.

Lately I have had the occasion to spend time with a cat. A fine cat indeed. This cat has a voice, a persistent voice, which she is not afraid to use. What Bimba lacks in vocabulary she makes up for in volume, both loudness and number of utterances. She meows as she wanders. clearly attempting to draw attention to the wonders of her life to those around her. If proper attention is not given to her observances, she resorts to those amazing ways that cats have of getting attention. She has an uncanny catty ability to determine where a human's eyes are focused, be it a computer screen, a magazine, a book, or another human, and places herself directly and unavoidably in the line of sight, sometimes reclining directly on the human's object of focus, like a living bookmark. She knows that she should not be ignored, and knows how to make that impossible.

Voiceless.

Humans are not so different from Bimba. If our voices are too low or too quiet to be heard, out of desperation we we ultimately find other ways to get attention, to let our needs be known. And it can be really annoying to those of us whose focus is elsewhere.

The wild-eyed homeless man holding the cardboard sign asking for food or work interrupting our lives at the bottom of the exit. Picket lines of workers who have lost their jobs, health insurance, and pensions blocking the entrance to a public building. Arab Spring protesters in the streets of Cairo and Benghazi. My favorite Mexican restaurant closing in protest of the Alabama immigration law.

Tea Party. Occupy Wall Street.

Sure, there are eccentric fringes among the crowds of the voiceless. For those of us who don't want to hear, it is easy to dismiss the lunatic fringe. But the fringe is only the fluttery, unraveled edge. The middle of those groups are not so lunatic. They are just desperate. In the middle of voiceless groups there are things that need to be heard by the rest of us, no matter how inconvenient. Because when you are voiceless for a long period of time, you are forced to listen. Forced to listen to the voices of power that drown out everything else. Forced to listen to those who seem to have taken your voice. Forced to hear things that the rest of us have been able to ignore because we are too busy talking with our respected, loud voices.

The thing about being voiceless is that you are forced to spend a lot of time listening. And there can be a lot of truth and wisdom gained from listening. But that wisdom is useless unless it is given the opportunity to be shared. And the respect to be heard.

When the voiceless plop themselves right down in our paths, right in our precious focus, we get irritated. We call them lazy, crazy, shiftless, right-wing nuts or anarchists or hippie wannabes. And we hope they go away.

But as diverse as these groups are, like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, the thing that they have in common is they felt like their voices were not being heard.

It was hard to let my order be heard among the chatter and clatter of the Saturday morning Huddle House crowd. But a waitress came to me as I sat at the counter, leaned in close as she heard my struggling voice and asked what I wanted. I had to repeat myself a couple of times before she could understand. But she stayed right there with me, patiently listening hard.

I could tell she had done this before. Stopping and listening hard among the noise and commotion until she understood.

We could learn a lot from that Huddle House waitress.

We could learn a lot if we stopped and listened . . .

for the wisdom of the voiceless.

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