Saturday, November 23, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Listen
O God, I will sing a new song to you.
Four words make up my “rule of life”: Read, Write, Listen, Pray. Those words constitute the purpose of every day. When they are accomplished, I can rest content. My spiritual awareness is getting its daily workout.
How about that third word, the “listen” word? In school I was taught to write. I was taught to give a speech – I learned, in other words, how to share my point of view. Was I taught to listen? I don’t remember any class in any school where the teacher shared principles of listening. Either it happened or it didn’t.
But HOW did it happen? How DOES it happen? Finally in counseling classes and practicums I learned the skill of reflective listening, giving immediate feedback about what I hear; and rather than pickpocketing a conversation, allow my friend’s thought to take its course. Empathy might be instinctive for some but not others – however empathy is also a skill, listening for a thought, feeling, and desire, and reflecting back those primary pieces of every part of a life. And then there is the magical, necessary giving of my time.
After three and a half days, a breath of life from God entered them.
There’s no hurry. We have more than enough. I am not just patient, but inviting. I am not just interested, but relaxed and accepting.
I, John, heard a voice from heaven speak to me Here are my two witnesses. Two olive trees and two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.
Can I get a witness?
Here’s a witness from the 12th century, a restless nobleman named Aelred, raised in Scotland but who joined a new gathering of Cistercian monks at Rievaulx, across the border in Yorkshire. Perhaps Aelred like most of us felt like a man without a country who needed friends himself. His famous treatise On Friendship is still in print. I strive to heed his words. In these devotions I return to them time after time, and I think they deserve to be on the wall of every meetinghouse, every office, every living room:
Here we are, you and I,
 and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst.
 There is no one now to disturb us;
 there is no one to break in upon our friendly chat,
no man’s prattle or noise of any kind
will creep into this pleasant solitude.
Come now, beloved, open your heart,
and pour into these friendly ears whatsoever you will
 and let us accept gracefully the boon
of this place, time, and leisure.
Now looking back I remember my grandfather Herman Brummer, who had plenty to say but reserved his right to say it in favor of listening to the “prattle” of his grandson. Although I didn’t know it then, I was learning how to listen, love and be loved in the gentle presence of a big grandpa who loved God.
His birthday will be December 15. He will be 125 years old. If time continues as we know it past the point of death. Either way, he is still with me.
(Revelation 11, Psalm 144, 2 Timothy 1, Luke 20)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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