Listening With All Our Heart

Listening With All Our Heart

Listening to Ourselves

Reflection By Scott Stoner

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.
- Saint Francis de Sales

Beginning today, and continuing through Friday, I will use the Living Compass Model for Well-Being and its four quadrants of heart, soul, strength, and mind to structure my reflections about listening to ourselves. Today we will focus on the Heart quadrant, which includes our Emotions and Relationships.

As a psychotherapist, I commonly meet with people who initially want help in getting rid of uncomfortable emotions, such as fear, sadness, anger, or anxiety. I typically respond that the most important first step is to begin by listening to what those troubling emotions are trying to say. Our emotions function like the warning lights on a car dashboard, letting us know that there is an underlying issue that may need to be explored and addressed.

Just as it is wise to learn to listen to uncomfortable emotions within ourselves, it is also wise to learn to honor and listen to discomfort if or when it arises in an important relationship in our lives. Ignoring uncomfortable feelings rarely helps them to go away. Instead, gently facing discomfort in a relationship, and risking what initially may be an awkward conversation, can be crucial in deepening and improving the relationship.

Because uncomfortable emotions, either within ourselves or in our relationships, are well, uncomfortable, it is understandable that we might want to avoid them. If we do that, though, often we will find that what we resist, persists, and that what we face, with time and care, can be resolved.

Making It Personal: As you listen to what’s happening right now with your emotions and/or your relationships, what do you hear? If you are experiencing any discomfort, can you sit with it to see what it has to teach you? What do you think of the idea that “what we resist, persists”?

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Follow along with us this Lent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.

In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.

TO JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP FOR LENT, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW:

Listening to Ourselves

Listening to Ourselves

Theme for the Week

Reflection By Scott Stoner

Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.
- A. R. Rahman

Each Monday we will introduce a theme for the week related to our overall theme of listening. This week our theme is “listening to ourselves.”

We start with the focus of listening to ourselves because we believe that how we listen to ourselves sets the pattern for how we listen in all other areas of our lives, including how we listen to others, and how we listen to God. If we are curious and open in listening to ourselves, we will be curious and open in listening to others. If we have a pattern of not listening well to ourselves, we will likely repeat that pattern in other areas of our lives, as well.

As the quote from A. R. Rahman states, when we listen to our inner voice, we are listening for how God is always whispering to us. When attended to, that inner, divine voice can serve as a compass to guide our lives. It can also serve as a guide for how to listen to others. Rahaman also reminds us that creating time for solitude and quiet within ourselves is essential for being able to hear the divine inner voice.

In yesterday’s reflection, Dawna Wall wrote about soul wrestling. She described well the biblical stories of people wrestling with their inner selves and with God as they seek healing, guidance, and wholeness. Sometimes soul wrestling is necessary to help us remove barriers that impede our ability to listen more fully to ourselves.

Making It Personal: How might you create some regular time of solitude to listen to the inner divine voice this Lent? Are you aware of any barriers within yourself that impede your ability to listen well?

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Follow along with us this Lent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.

In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.

TO JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP FOR LENT, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW:

Soul Wrestling

Soul Wrestling

The First Sunday in Lent

Reflection By Dawna Wall

The Wilderness holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask.
- Nancy Wynne Newhall

It is often unsettling to realize anew that the distance from joy to despair is so short and also so long. Jesus, in offering himself for the cleansing ritual of baptism, has listened for and heard deep inside his soul that he is beloved and this knowledge spurs him toward the soul wrestling that devastates and renews. Soul wrestling is a familiar story in Scripture—we think of Jacob and the angel, of Hagar in the wilderness, of the many unnamed women and men who cry out, reach toward the healing love of God and limp forward, changed and blessed.

In our wrestling places we might ask for a sign, a promise, some hint that the anguish of this present moment is not all there is. Mark’s Gospel shrinks the story of Jesus’ wilderness time to a few sentences, but between the lines there is a world of experience. As there is with ours too. “It’s a long story,” we might say, without telling it. That’s where Jesus is—coming to terms with the hunger of body, mind, and spirit and, as he wrestles, reciting to himself the promises of Scripture that he knows by heart. All while listening deeply to what God is revealing to him in the wilderness.

As we seek to live well through Lent, we too will need to confront our wilderness places—wrestling again and again with the insecurities, the frustrations, the hungers that leave us feeling less than and not enough. Like Jesus we listen and watch for signs, in glimpses of rainbows, in refrains of Psalms—words and images to help us remember the way from despair to hope.

Poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama writes, “To engage with the text this way requires careful and heartfelt reading, noticing the nooks and crannies where the imagination can lodge, paying attention to the curiosities that emerge and creating a stopping-point there” (Daily Prayer with the Corrymeala Community, p. 61).

Honoring the stopping points, the rest areas, and the lookouts are all opportunities to assess where we are on our faith journeys. How we live well in the midst of deep sorrow and unexpected joy. Making space where our “imaginations can lodge” and engaging in curiosity as we look around and listen for where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going, are all ways that we honor those angular parts of our stories, the wrestling and the resolution.

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Follow along with us this Lent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.

In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.

TO JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP FOR LENT, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW:

Talk Less, Listen More

Talk Less, Listen More

The Fourth Day of Lent

Reflection By Scott Stoner

One who spares words is knowledgeable.
- Proverbs 17:27

I regularly listen to the soundtrack from Hamilton: An American Musical. There is a line in the second song on the album, “Aaron Burr, sir,” that relates to our focus on listening.

In this song, we hear an anxious Alexander Hamilton meeting Aaron Burr for the first time. He is talking incessantly as he tries to get Burr’s attention. At one point in the song, after Burr has heard more than enough, he turns to Hamilton and says, “Let me offer you some free advice. Talk less, smile more.”

For our purposes, I would like to rephrase it slightly. “Let me offer you some free advice. Talk less, listen more.” Like Hamilton, I know I am especially vulnerable to talking too much when I feel anxious or insecure. As I have grown older, I have learned to become more comfortable with making room for silence in interactions with others, and not anxiously filling natural lulls in the conversation.

In her Ash Wednesday reflection, Lisa Saunders candidly shared how one year she gave up yelling at her children for Lent. Sometimes learning to talk less is not just about the number of words we speak, but also about the choice and tone of the words we use. Lisa expressed this when she wrote that she realized how the way she spoke impacted the way others felt. My prayer is that paying close attention to how we speak and how we listen will be an enriching Lenten discipline for us all.

Making It Personal: Do you tend to talk at times more than you listen? What are you aware of at this point that can help you to “talk less, listen more”? In your prayer life, do you tend to spend more time talking than listening?

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Follow along with us this Lent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.

In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.

TO JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP FOR LENT, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW:

Practicing Listening

Practicing Listening

The Third Day of Lent

Reflection By Scott Stoner

Practice makes progress, not perfection.
- Unknown

I have been taking private Spanish lessons for the last two years. My teacher lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and we talk via Skype for one hour every week. There are two things that I have discovered from my experience of learning to speak Spanish that I would like to apply to our focus this Lent on listening.

First, I find that I am much better at speaking Spanish than listening to someone else speak it. Speaking is easier for me because I know what it is I am trying to say. Listening is more difficult because I have to intentionally focus all my attention on understanding what my teacher is saying to me. I find that my mind wanders more easily when I am listening to something I don’t fully understand than when I am formulating my own sentences, and so I must discipline myself to focus.

Second, my teacher always reminds me that if I genuinely want to improve both my speaking and listening, I have to practice, practice, and practice. We only become more proficient at something by practicing it, not by merely wishing to be more proficient.

The parallels here to our focus this Lent are clear. For many people, speaking seems to come more naturally than listening. Listening usually requires more intentional commitment and effort. If we want to enhance our ability to listen, we will need to practice, practice, and practice.

Making It Personal: Do you find that, in general, listening is more difficult than speaking for you? What helps you to focus as you listen to someone else? Are you ready to make a commitment this Lent to practice listening?

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Follow along with us this Lent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.

In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.

TO JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP FOR LENT, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW:

Barriers to Listening

BARRIERS TO LISTENING

The Second Day of Lent

Reflection By Scott Stoner

Listening is essential for the development of intimacy, trust, healing, and wisdom.
- Lisa Saunders

When you ask a young child to do something they don’t much feel like doing, such as picking up their toys or getting ready for bed, there is a reaction they commonly have that is simultaneously amusing and a bit off-putting. They cover their ears to keep from listening to what is being said to them. The logic is if they can’t hear, they won’t have to do what is being asked of them.

While I don’t do anything quite so obvious as putting my hands over my ears when someone is talking to me, I certainly can do other things that interfere with my being a good listener. I can, for example, interrupt a person speaking to me. I can pretend to be listening when, in fact, my mind is somewhere else. I can also multitask when someone is talking to me, which clearly says I am not giving them my full attention.

Our focus for this Lent daily devotional is listening. As we begin this journey, I invite each of us to become aware of things we do, intentionally or not, that limit our ability to listen well. As Lisa Saunders wrote yesterday, “Ash Wednesday is the start to a season inviting us to set aside or stop whatever gets in the way of our listening well.”

Making It Personal: What gets in the way of your ability to listen well to others? Can you think of a time recently when you did not give your full attention to someone? If so, what can you learn from that experience?

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Follow along with us this Lent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.

In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.

TO JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP FOR LENT, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW:

Ash Wednesday

ASH WEDNESDAY

Reflection By Lisa Saunders

The word “listen” contains the same letters as the word “silent.”
- Alfred Brendel

One year for Lent I gave up yelling at my children.

They were ten, eight, and four. My volume control was no longer under control. I raised my voice far too often, making none of us happy. I told our children the plan. They were thrilled and took great pleasure in holding me accountable.

Of all the Lenten disciplines I have taken on through the years, this one stuck. I broke a bad habit. I had been yelling because no one appeared to be listening to me. As it turned out, the less I yelled, the more they heard me. And I found I was better at listening to them.

It surprised me to realize that being good at listening is not just about hearing what someone says. It is also about how my listening makes someone else feel.

Ash Wednesday is the start to a season inviting us to set aside or stop whatever gets in the way of our listening well. The letters in the word “listen” can be rearranged to spell “silent.” I am not any good at silence. But I don’t think God yells, so if I want to hear God, I must get quiet. It is lovely to imagine that I might delight God by the way I listen.

Listening is essential for the development of intimacy, trust, healing, and wisdom. Listening to our loved ones (heart), to our longings (soul), to our body (strength), and to our insight (mind) are all forms of prayer and listening to God. I find that God speaks to me most often through other people, but I also hear God’s voice in my gut, in my bliss, and in my ounce of common sense.

Listening with our heart, soul, strength, and mind has restorative pow- ers. Some pain cannot be taken away, but hurt that is heard can be eased. When we listen with a desire to understand and appreciate, we unfurl and expand. The woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment was healed of her disease. She also got to tell Jesus “the whole truth.” That he listened to her story likely healed her soul, as well.

My two favorite Lents were those that I was on maternity leave. I didn’t take on any special Lenten practice, although I sacrificed sleep and sanity all forty days. I spent those Lents falling in love, nestling a grapefruit-sized head against my heart. I am spending this Lent nuzzling the head of my infant grandson. I am listening for his fretful cries, contented coos, and still, small voice. If I am quiet enough, I will hear the love between us flowing like a rushing river.

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Follow along with us this Lent season with our daily devotional and engage in discussion in our closed facebook group moderated by Robbin Brent, Jan Kwiatowski, and Scott Stoner.

In this group, participants will have a chance to share their responses to the prompts in the daily readings, and also the chance to receive additional material for reflection.

TO JOIN OUR PRIVATE FACEBOOK DISCUSSION GROUP FOR LENT, CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW: