Occasionally, I hear my fathers voice in church.
He is not there. He does not attend church. But I grew up going to synagogue with him and my mother, standing next to them as he sang. He has a lovely voice. In fact, he had musical training as a child and has been in quite a number of amateur musicals.
I hear him because my voice is sometimes so much like his (not of course in excellence, but in tenor) that occasionally it is as if he is standing there next to me.
In that moment of recollection, He becomes sensibly present to me. In those moments in which the beginning of things seems to touch on the end, in which its seems as if nothing true shall ever be lost, I dare not loose hope.
For, I hear my Father’s voice in church.