Listening

Listening

“Be a lamp, a lifeboat or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” Rumi (1207-1273), Daily Quotes, inwardoutward.org, May 3, 2018.

Paula Volpe

Sometimes I think if I were to redesign a program about spiritual direction that 90% of the time would be devoted to listening. My experience is that listening is one of the best tools of the Holy Spirit within us. I am talking about active listen where we clear our heads as much as possible of agendas and what is going on in our lives. We offer up the gift of time for forty-five minutes or an hour to listen to someone else’s life. For this short period of time we are given the privilege of caring for the soul of another, helping a person realize God’s never-failing presence in his or her own presence.

I sit and all these great ideas come to me as I listen. “I think she would like this book. Changing to this spiritual exercise might be helpful.”

I am learning that if I interrupt with my ideas, they often fall on deaf ears, but if I wait until there is silence and speak, the person seems to see and hear better what I might suggest. Sometimes as I wait, I later realize, “no, this was not the right book or spiritual exercise.”

I have learned a great deal about listening from my harp. Perhaps you have occasionally noticed a loud buzzing sound when some harpists play. Buzz. One of the reasons for a buzz is that you have plucked a string that is still vibrating from a recent placement of that finger or another finger on that string. You must wait for that string to stop vibrating before you play it again or this annoying sound comes out.

My buzzing harp is reminding me that I must wait for the person I am visiting with to stop talking.

I am learning how to play less buzzing notes and to talk less and listen more at the same time. My buzzing harp string has become my icon for listening.

Listening can become a “lamp, a lifeboat, and a ladder” to the presence of the Holy Spirit in our own lives as well as the lives of our spiritual friends.

Joanna. Joannaeibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter in Little Rock from me joannaseibert@me.com or from Wordsworth Books or from the publisher Earth Songs Press or on Amazon.. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

Wisdom from the Harp, Community

Wisdom from the Harp, Community

“For the elements changed places with one another,

as on a harp the notes vary the nature of the rhythm,

while each note remains the same.” Wisdom 19:18

A friend reminds me this was in the scripture in morning prayer today. I read the first part of the Wisdom reading this morning but missed this last part. I hope I won’t miss it next time, for this ancient verse so well describes music, but especially the harp. I began a journey with this classical instrument over thirty years ago when my daughter begged for a year to get a harp.

The strings are the white keys of the piano, so if you understand the piano, it is easy. You lean the body against your body so you can not only hear the vibrations but you feel the music within you as well. The harp has taught me so many lessons about life other than the discipline of trying to master a technique for following and plucking the notes.

When one string breaks, it is difficult to continue playing. Part of playing is knowing the relationships of each string to the other. Now there is a gap, large or small which changes the entire road map. I learn I must take the time to replace the string as soon as possible. Then of course it takes, days, weeks for that new string to stretch and be in tune. It must be “mentored” so to speak.

Almost every atmospheric condition changes the harp strings. Constant tuning is mandatory. My husband loves the old joke about harpist. We spend half our time tuning and the other half playing out of tune!

On this musical journey, the harp has become for me an icon for living and working in community. Its constant need for tuning reminds me how much I must try to stay current, learning and staying and in relationship with what is going on in the world around me. If I don’t, I become “out of tune” either too sharp or too flat.

I would love to hear from others about life lessons they have learned from a musical instrument.

Joanna. Joannaeibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter in Little Rock from me joannaseibert@me.com or from Wordsworth Books or from the publisher Earth Songs Press or on Amazon.. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.

De Waal: Living on the Border, Community

De Waal: Living on the Border, Community

“The first step in listening, learning, and changing is to see that different is not dangerous; the second is to be happy and willing to live with uncertainty; the third is to rejoice in ambiguity and to embrace it. It all means giving up the comfort of certainty and realizing that uncertainty can actually be good.”

-- Esther de Waal in To Pause at the Threshold, Reflections on Living on the Border ( Morehouse), p. 86.

When de Waal wrote this book, she had returned to the home where she had grown up on the border between England and Wales. I met this prolific writer of Benedictine and Celtic spirituality at the College of Preachers at the Washington National Cathedral. She often took up residence there and was accessible during meals to weekly pilgrims like myself seeking respite and learning at this sacred space. This small pocket-sized book is a gem to be read and re-read.

De Waal is talking about how we relate to borders and boundaries as she is directly experiencing borders in her day to day living experience. Do we build walls and barriers and fortresses or do we engage in conversation and learn about something different, another culture? She describes the diversity of the world as an icon to let us know that God loves differences. She entices us to be like a porter waiting at the gate of a Benedictine monastery, standing at the “threshold of two worlds”, welcoming those who come no matter the time of day, treating each stranger as if it were Christ.

This resonates with me as a deacon. Our ministry calls us to go back and forth between two worlds, the church, and the world outside of the church. De Waal also teaches us to honor the threshold of the two worlds and be open to the change, the uncertainty, the contradictions that the different worlds may present to us.

De Waal’s concept of thresholds has been helpful in visiting those in hospitals or the homebound. I have learned to pause as I am about to cross the threshold of the door. At hospitals, this is a time to wash my hands at the door. The threshold is a symbolic reminder that I am entering another world. The handwashing is a reminder to leave my agenda at the door. I am there to honor that person and to listen and be present to them. Some of the time I remember.

Joanna. Joannaeibert.com

Purchase a copy of A Daily Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter in Little Rock from me joannaseibert@me.com or from Wordsworth Books or from the publisher Earth Songs Press or on Amazon.. Proceeds from the book go for hurricane relief in the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.