55 similarly reminders of that one great loss. I want Adam and Eve to have wanted it back—the sound of God’s presence. I want Eve to have turned around eagerly, Adam’s eyes to have sparkled like they hadn’t in years and his feet to have carried him deeper toward the echoing joyful laugh. But I am afraid it was like they were ducking past strangers on the street, gazes bouncing nervously between the ground and the skyscraper-framed sky. I am afraid that the noise of their distress, made to fill that thunderous nothingness where they should have heard footsteps, eventually died down. Determined to move forward, to find some kind of faith again, they learned to live in a new way, as if the place was the same. As if the world hadn’t shifted and as if the loss had not been jarring. It would not do for them to ache for the sounds of the past. Their children, like me, would never know what it had sounded like for those few deafening moments. In that silence, though, is where they must have found the determination to move forward. The world moves beneath your feet so suddenly that you wonder for the first time whether this is real, because real has never sounded this way before. It’s because of the echoes and the deluded hope, magnified in the sudden silence, that you can turn your back on what has been and find a new sound. Raise a flag, help a stranger. Find a new canyon or weave a basket, and remember there is someone to show it to. Train yourself to listen for something else, gradually. Forget the sound of before, and
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