Spiritual Practices A to Z: Listening

Continuing on with the Spiritual Practices A to Z, I'm now at "L" which is Listening.

Spiritual Practice: Listening

Enhances: Discernment

Balances/Counters: Disregard for others

The Basic Practice

One spiritual practice is often associated with others. Listening involves attention, being present, and hospitality, and it is a component of devotion, nurturing, and wonder.

Listening enables us to tune in to others and our inner voices of intuition and conscience. It is how we know we are part of the natural, technological, and media worlds all around us.

Squirrel nibbling on a pinecone at the Grand Canyon.

However, it takes practice to be a good listener. Start by listening like a baby does upon encountering a sound for the first time. Then listen like a child, noticing music, rhythm, and the variety of noises. Next, tune in to the messages coming to you from all directions and multiple levels of experience.

Why This Practice May Be For You

There is no greater way to show our regard for our friends, family, and associates than to truly listen to them. A "listening heart," as this attitude is called, leads to deeper relationships and a greater sense of self. This kind of communication isn't limited to human interactions. Listen to an animal, the waves on the beach, or the noise of a city neighborhood, and you will come to a greater appreciation of your place in the universe.

Scooby watching and listening to me.

Conversely, an inability or unwillingness to listen is a symptom of self-centeredness. It signals that we are focused on ourselves, not interested in participating in what is going on around us. It can also indicate an obliviousness to our own best interests which may be trying to make themselves known through our inner voices.

Quotes

The greatest wisdom is listening
to the guidance of the heart.
— Kabir Helminski in The Knowing Heart

My parents listening to me when we were visiting my dad 

in the nursing home. 

For listening is the act of entering the skin of the other and wearing it for a time as if it were our own. Listening is the gateway to understanding.
— David Spangler in Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent

Books

I read the book Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer. In it, he talks about his pilgrimage toward selfhood and vocation. For him, the heart of the journey involves both listening and discernment. There was a poem that I found intriguing that opened the first chapter:

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

Some of the key points I want to remember include:
- From the poem above: "Ask me whether what I have done is my life." These words remind me of moments when it is clear - if I have eyes to see - that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. In those moments I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden life the river beneath the ice. And in the spirit of the poet, I wonder: What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be?

Olivia trimming a bowl.

- Trying to live someone else's life, or to live by an abstract norm, will invariably fail - and may even do great damage.
- We listen for guidance everywhere except from within.
- A poem from May Sarton:

Now I become myself

It's taken time, many years and places.

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces...

- I grew strong enough to discard the idea that vocation, or calling, comes from a voice external to ourselves, a voice of moral demand that asks us to become someone we are not yet - someone different, someone better, someone just beyond our reach.
- It comes from a voice "in here" calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth.
- I am gathering my observations in a letter. When my granddaughter reaches her late teens or early twenties, I will make sure that my letter finds its way to her, with a preface something like this: "Here is a sketch of who you were from your earliest days in the world. It is not a definitive picture - only you can draw that. But it was sketched by a person who loves you very much. Perhaps these notes will help you do sooner something your grandfather did only later: remember who you were when you first arrived and reclaim the gift of true self."

Sophia playing the harp.

- We are disabused of original giftedness in the first half of our lives. Then - if we are awake, aware, and able to admit our loss - we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed.
- From the beginning, our lives lay down clues to selfhood and vocation, though the clues may be hard to decode.
- The deepest vocational question is not "What ought I to do with my life?" It is the more elemental and demanding "Who am I? What is my nature?"

The girls and me many years ago.

- Making pottery, for example, involves more than telling the clay what to become. The clay presses back on the potter's hands, telling her what it can and cannot do - and if she fails to listen, the outcome will be both frail and ungainly.

Olivia making a vase in pottery class.

- Self-care is never a selfish act - it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.
- If we are unfaithful to true self, we will extract a price from others. We will make promises we cannot keep, build houses from flimsy stuff, conjure dreams that devolve into nightmares, and other people will suffer -- if we are unfaithful to true self.
- Rosa Parks decided, "I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the trust that I hold deeply on the inside. I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be."
- If I try to be or do something noble that has nothing to do with who I am, I may look good to others and myself for a while. But the fact that I am exceeding my limits will eventually have consequences. I will distort myself, the other, and our relationship - and may end up doing more damage than if I had never set out to this particular 'good.' When I try to do something that is not in my nature or the nature of the relationship, way will close behind me.

Sophia giving a presentation about Egypt at a 4-H club I once led.

- Dorothy Day said, "Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only impoverish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward.
- We are created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one another. But community cuts both ways, when we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need.
- Burnout: trying to give what I do not possess - the ultimate in giving too little. Burnout is a state of emptiness, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.
-  Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around - which puts the door behind us - and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls. The door that closed kept up from entering a room, but what now lies before us is the rest of reality.

Olivia doing gymnastics.

She was able to start doing this because we had more time 

after I stopped being the leader of a 4-H club.

It opened up doors for Olivia to learn a new sport in 2017 (gymnastics) 

as well as get her firearms license in 2018 and 

begin doing Shooting Sports (trap shooting and .22 target practice).

- The anxiety that kept me pounding on closed doors, almost prevented me from seeing the secret hidden in plain sight: I was already standing on the ground of my new life, ready to take the next step on my journey, if only I would turn around and see the landscape that lay before me.
- Depression is the ultimate state of disconnection - it deprives one of the relatedness that is the lifeline of every living being.
- Depression is the ultimate state of disconnection, not just between people but between one's mind and one's feelings. To be reminded of that disconnection may only deepen one's despair.
Depression is the ultimate state of disconnection, not only between people, and between mind and heart, but between one's self-image and the public mask.
- I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do. If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership of some sort.

The girls with their leadership project they oversaw in 2017; and

that Sophia built upon in 2018.

The One Stop Donation Drop has been done on a large scale twice and 

smaller scale three times from November 2015-present.

- We have places of fear inside of us, but we have other places as well - places with names like trust and hope and faith. We can choose to lead from one of those places, to stand on ground that is not riddled with the fault lines of fear, to move toward others from a place of promise instead of anxiety. As stand in one of the those places, fear may remain close at hand and our spirits may still tremble. But now we stand on ground that will support us, ground from which we can lead others toward a more trustworthy, more hopeful, more faithful way of being in the world.
- My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty all around.

Picture of a leaf in autumn that Olivia took.

- In retrospect, I can see in my own life what I could not see at the time - how the job I lost helped me find work I needed to do....how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to discern meanings I needed to know. On the surface, it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown.
- Winter...is the gift of utter clarity. In winter, one can walk into woods that had been opaque with summer growth only a few months earlier and see the trees clearly, singly and together, and see the ground they are rooted in.

A picture of a leaf in winter under ice.

- The gift of life, which seemed to be withdrawn in winter, has been given once again, and nature, rather than hoarding it, gives it all away.
- Daily I am astonished at how readily I believe that something I need is in short supply. If I hoard possessions, it is because I believe that there are not enough to go around. If I struggle with others over power, it is because I believe that power is limited. If I become jealous in relationships, it is because I believe that when you get too much love, I will be shortchanged.
- The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. If I fight my way up the ladder of power, others will be defeated and I will never feel secure. If I get jealous of someone I love, I am likely to drive that person away.
- In the human world, abundance does not happen automatically. It is created when we have the sense to choose community, to come together to celebrate and share our common store.

Film

I watched the movie Contact that is directed by Robert Zemeckis.

The movie description is: "She's known it since she was a young girl, when she would magically connect with distant voices on her father's shortwave radio. She's known it since college, when she chose the search for intelligent extraterrestrial messages as her discipline. She's known it since she bargained for just hours a week of satellite time to sweep the heavens for evidence. And she knows it every time she stares at the countless stars dappling the infinite night sky... Something is out there."

Music

Paul Winter and his associates create music to combat what ecophilosopher Thomas Berry calls human autism — our inability to listen to any voices other than those of our own kind.

On Earth: Voices of a Planet and Wolf Eyes: A Retrospective, Winter on soprano sax is joined by Paul Halley on keyboards, David Darling and Eugene Friesen on cello, and other musicians in tributes to the old growth forests, rain forests, oceans, and other remaining natural habitats of the planet.

The oak tree in our northwest pasture.

However, the most important collaborators on these song poems are the recorded wildlife: spotted owl, elephant, Weddell seal, musician wren from the Amazon, Australian lyrebird, European blackbird, bottlenose dolphin, orca whale, and timber wolf.

I listened to "Sea Song" on Winter's website which was relaxing...very peaceful. I didn't hear any animal sounds, though, which was disappointing. Perhaps in some of the other pieces they are louder or a more significant part of the song.

Art

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's Calling of Saint Matthew depicts the spiritual practice of listening. Levi, the tax collector who will be named Matthew, is seated at a table with four assistants when Jesus appears in the room and summons him with a simple gesture of his hand.

Levi's face is illuminated with light from the doorway, but it is a different kind of attention that he responds to.

Calls and messages, some of them nonverbal, are always coming to us from all directions. The challenge is to recognize the important ones, which may only be possible when we have learned how to listen.

Daily Cue, Reminder, Vow, Blessing

• Putting on headphones is a cue for me to practice listening.

• Noticing how an animal pricks up its ears at the slightest sound, I am reminded to keep my ears open to the world around me.

Aspen listening.

• Whenever I tell a story to a friend and sense that s/he is not really attending to it, I vow to be a better listener. (I also will wrap up the story so as to relieve the person of having to listen to something they don't want to listen to for whatever reason.)

Practice of the Day

Spiritual teaching has always pointed to the fact that everything in creation has a sound, its own unique vibration. As conscious listeners we may perceive more and more of what the universe is saying to us by the simple act of listening. We can learn to appreciate each and every sound.
— Katherine Le Mee in Chant

To Practice This Thought: Focus on the variety of sounds in your environment right now. How many tones can you distinguish?

As I do this on the morning of August 20th, all I can hear are three fans blowing cool air. I need to turn them off to hear anything else.

Now what do I hear?
- Lucy (the cat) purring
- Birds singing in the distance
- Birds chirping in the pine tree
- Scooby (the dog) rustling a bit on the bed
- Quietness and peacefulness
- Literally quietness...an absence of sound
- Scooby snoring
- Red squirrels chattering at one another in the backyard
- At 7:57 a.m., I am so grateful for how calm and relaxing our home is. I know shortly there will be workers here to start building the garage. Until then, I can listen to the birds, squirrels, and pets.

Aspen playing in the backyard while Scooby explores different smells.

Journal Exercises

• In Who Cares? Simple Ways You Can Reach Out, Marcy Heidish, who has served as a hospital chaplain, describes a useful tool from her training — the "listener's log." She wrote verbatim records of her visits with patients in order to learn how much she actually heard and how helpful her responses were.

Sophia and Dr. Clair after Sophia's surgery.

Log some of your conversations in your journal. Then ask yourself these questions, suggested by Heidish:
- Did you create a receptive atmosphere?
- Did you take over or grow distant?
- When were the moments of breakthrough, connection, and insight?

I didn't do this, but it intrigues me as something to do in the future. These are good questions to keep in mind whenever a person is talking with someone else.

• Make lists to assess how you listen:

- Who I Always Listen To.
- Who I Rarely Listen To.
- Who Listens To Me.
- Who I Want to Listen To Me.

Again, these are interesting thoughts to reflect upon. I would add one more "Who Rarely Listens To Me." This may tie into the last one "Who I Want to Listen To Me."

Discussion Questions, Storytelling, Sharing

• Describe a favorite sound. What do you associate with it?

One of my favorite sounds is when I come back home and the dogs all start howling in unison to welcome me home. I read that animals howl to guide the ones who have been away hunting back to their home. 

Then, once they see me, they all make different sounds of happiness and excitement. It truly makes me feel like they consider me one of their pack (perhaps the pack leader since they don't do this for anyone else in the family...only if others are with me). 

No other dogs have done this, so it's been so neat to hear this. I really should record them howling because I know that these four together feed off of one another and all howl in unison.

Cooper watching outside for squirrels.

• Share an example of a time when you listened to your body. This could be feedback about an illness, an intuitive hit, or another type of sensation. Did you heed the message?

Most recently, I helped coordinate a local community activity that involved planting perennials and bushes at the intersections of a local highway and county road that runs through town. The city worked with the Department of Transportation to develop a plan and secure the plants I was asked to help secure volunteers.

The volunteers who helped plant two gardens in our community.

We planted two large gardens for three hours in humid weather with temperatures starting in the mid-70s and by 12:30 reaching the low 80s. 

One view of the garden on the southeast corner of the intersection.

It  was hard work, but very rewarding.  

Another view of the garden on the southeast corner of the intersection.

When I came home, I could barely move (thanks to degenerative disk disease). I had to lay down for the balance of the day, take a hot bath to loosen my muscles, and take Ibuprofen  to reduce inflammation. I knew that if I didn't listen to what my body was telling me, that I would be unable to do much - if anything - for the rest of the Labor Day weekend. 

Because I listened to my body, I feel better today (Sunday), and am only slightly sore still. I'm happy that I took it easy for the rest of the afternoon and evening, so that I can do other things this weekend.

• Read a story aloud. Notice how your experience of the tale is affected by hearing it.

I have done this in the past when I've read to the girls, and it does make a difference to hear the story aloud. If the story is good and well-written, I tend to take my time, pause more, and try to emphasize what the author is trying to convey. 

*~*~*~*~*

These ideas are from the Spirituality and Practice website.