How Do I Listen?

How Do I Listen?

“How

Do I

Listen to others?

As if everyone were my Master

Speaking to me

His

Cherished

Last

Words.”—Hafiz, The Gift (renderings by Daniel James Ladinsky).

Listening skills are paramount with spiritual friends. I remember one person I met with for spiritual direction who talked for the entire hour. I never spoke a word. I kept waiting for her to breathe, but it didn’t seem to happen. At first, I couldn’t understand why she came, but gradually, I sensed that she simply needed someone to listen to her to acknowledge the God within her. This became more evident after she recommended several other people to come for direction, because she said I was so helpful! I later realized she was a gift, teaching me how to listen.

We can practice many listening exercises, enabling us to become experienced listeners. For example, a grief recovery group, Walking the Mourner’s Path, uses a very effective one. At the first meeting of those grieving the death of a loved one, the participants divide into pairs, and each person tells the other about their loved one. Then, they all return to the group, as each listener tells the group about the person grieved by their partner. Even though the pairs never work together again, they develop a bond for the program’s eight weeks or longer.

Today’s picture is of Bishop Michael Curry, one of the world’s most compassionate listeners.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

John McCain

John McCain

“But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,

and no torment will ever touch them.

In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,

and their departure was thought to be a disaster,

and their going from us to be their destruction;

but they are at peace.

For though in the sight of others they were punished,

their hope is full of immortality.

Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good,

because God tested them and found them worthy of himself.

Those who trust in him will understand truth,

and the faithful will abide with him in love,

because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones,

and he watches over his elect.”—Wisdom 3:1-5, 9.

Along with many Americans, I spent several days watching memorials to Senator John McCain in 2018. Then, I watched the service at the National Cathedral on the Saturday morning of his funeral. I became awed at the Cathedral over thirty years ago when our friends Joanne and Allan Meadors introduced us to it through the National Cathedral Association, and we became hooked. We visited it at least twice a year for twenty years, often staying at the College of Preachers on its grounds. I am still reeling from this memorable service held in this familiar sacred space on that Saturday morning. 

Former Senator Kelly Ayotte read these beautiful scriptural words from the Book of Wisdom recommended for the Burial Office.

I am impressed by how a man can inspire us through his death—how he lived, and even how he planned his burial service. I can barely talk about it, much less write about it. So many of us were reduced to tears by Meghan McCain’s tribute to her father. This is often a sign of greatness when a man involved in politics is also deeply cared for and loved by his children. 

The entire service was inspiring, a remembrance of an icon—of someone who made mistakes and owned up to them, who dared to cross the aisle at the Senate to listen to representatives of the other party, who learned to speak his truth and face the consequences. 

Many believe he grew in character because of his five years of captivity in North Vietnam as a prisoner of war. Most of us cannot imagine what that was like. McCain is a role model for us of someone who turned his trials into gold.

I see many lives in captivity, not in the way McCain’s was, but caught in the captivity of addictions or addictive lifestyles. I daily encounter ordinary men and women who have learned from and come out of that life into what Christians would call a life of resurrection, an alternative life beyond anything they could have dreamed. Many who previously knew them can no longer recognize them—physically, mentally, or spiritually.

John McCain’s service was a service of resurrection, a reminder for all of us that there is another way to live and that we can begin that journey long before death.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Chiasmus

Chiasmus = ‘X’

Guest Writer: Ken Fellows

     At a retirement dinner in Philadelphia honoring a friend …an intense but respected hospital president …my toast to him included this bit of borrowed wisdom:

                                             “People don’t care how much you know

                                                  Until they know how much you care.” (anon)

     This language form …a syntactic ‘switcheroo’… is called a chiasmus. Even though its usage can be traced to ancient Sanskrit and Egyptian texts, Chinese writing, Hebrew poetry, and the Old and New Testaments, the term remains obscure.   A number of wits and writers—Churchill, Shaw, Ben Franklin, Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and George Carlin, among others –have used the chiasmus as an effective language tool in recent times.

     The dictionary definition of chiasmus is: “a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases.” The letter ‘X’ in the Greek alphabet is “chi,” and the Greek word “kiasmos” means “crossing”—also “to mark with an X.” The term is well known to neuroanatomists:  behind the eyes, the optic nerves going to the brain cross (right eye to left brain, left eye to right brain) at a junction called the “optic chiasmus.”

     In literature, the clauses of a chiasmus are written parallel to each other, usually two lines connecting the keywords:

                                               “Never let a fool kiss you

                                                          or a kiss fool you. (anon)

                                                 “One should eat to live,

                                                          not live to eat.”

     Chiastic phrases can also be constructed by reversing letters and sounds:

                                               “A magician pulls rabbits out of hats.

                                                   A research psychologist pulls habits out of rats.” (anon)

     The best wits would be less witty without an occasional chiasmus or one of its variations.

When a young member of Parliament finished giving an address, he later asked Churchill what he could have done to put more fire into the speech, to which Sir Winston replied: 

                                     “What you should have done is

                                         to have put the speech in the fire.”

     There is also the ‘implied chiasmus’ –a word reversal in a well-known saying that stands alone:

                                                 “A hangover is the wrath of grapes.” (anon.)

                                                  “Time’s fun when you’re having flies. “(Kermit the Frog)

                                                  “Time flies like an arrow: fruit flies like a banana.” (Groucho)

                                                  “The waist is a terrible thing to mind.” (anon.)

     These implied versions are double the fun –first recalling the original saying, then marveling at the creative transposition of words.

        I’m including a painting, Brave Boat Harbor Reflection, of a reflected sky* ... in my mind, a chiasmus being not only a ‘cross-over’ but a ‘reflection’.... ‘same thing seen from varying perspectives.

     Like a sumptuous dinner of rich food, listing chiastic examples becomes too much of a good thing. Since this blog tends to talk about our spiritual life, the conclusion of this exposition ends with a favorite chiasmus:

                                                    “I find Peale appalling

                                                        and Paul appealing.” (Adlai Stevenson)

                                Addendum: “Chiasmus” over the years has had other names:  inverted parallelism, syntactical inversion, reverse parallelism, crisscross quotes, and turnarounds. William Safire suggested ‘contrapunctal phrases’, but it never caught on. Similarly, Hemingway invented “double dichos” (dicho, the Spanish word for ‘saying’). Chiasmus is the only enduring rubric.

Ken Fellows

Joanna joannaseibert.com