Spiritual lessons from the West Wing, part one of many

One of the scenes that never fails to have me reaching for the tissues and another spoonful of Haagen Daz does not, as you might expect, involve Josh and Donna or even a rousing speech by Jed Bartlet or Matt Santos.

It’s towards the end of the whole thing, when CJ is trying to work out how she can share her life with someone, now that the West Wing adventure is over and it may turn out that there is more to life. (Hard to believe, I know.) She has, she says, “missed the window” – that mythical point in a youngish person’s life when they are flexible enough to learn to make decisions in partnership with someone, to consider how to accommodate them in their choices.

She hasn’t.

So Danny assures her. He doesn’t want to make her decisions for her, as she had thought he was implying. He wants her to speak to him about them – because, and here’s that killer line:

He loves the sound of her voice.

While I was journaling this morning, when I wasn’t really making any decisions, wasn’t really asking for God’s help for anything (I came to that later), or pouring out my soul about any heart-wrenching pain, was in fact beginning to suspect I was just rambling, I thought I heard Him whisper something to me.

He loves the sound of my voice.

That’s why he wants me to share everything with Him. Not so I can beat myself up when He tells me I’m not holy enough; not because He wants to force His way into areas of my life I’m finding it hard to hand over to him.

“What else?”

That’s Danny’s phrase. “What else?” Keep going. Tell me. I want to know everything, down to the typo Toby found in the constitution. A comma. So insignificant! (Well, to some people, anyway.) But it’s part of her day, and so he wants to know.

Because he loves the sound of her voice.

Think you’ve forgotten how to share your life with Someone? That maybe there was a time in your youth when you could get excited about God, when you could strum your guitar for hours or cry into your pillow asking Him for help, but now you’ve forgotten what intimacy with God feels like, and it’s time to settle for the superficial appearance of respectable religion? Think you’ve missed the window?

You haven’t.

He wants you to talk to Him.

Because He loves the sound of your voice.