Lately I have been immersed in the hard work of listening.
After a fallow season, guests again retreat here to Spa for the Soul. They come
to rest, to pray, to regain perspective, to learn, to find healing, and to
explore new territory in their pilgrimage with Jesus. They stay a week. Or
three. Often I accompany them as spiritual director.
Spiritual director. That’s a whole other topic. In short, it
means a gift and a call was discerned and confirmed by my community, and I undertook
training in this ancient discipline in order to mature in listening, prayer and
accompaniment on the spiritual journey of another.
During my years of study our tutor often remarked that, for
many, the greatest gift we would give was simply to listen. To attend to
another’s story and to let it be, in that hour, the only story. To allow it to
unfold, to make its twists and turns, to flow its own course. “For many, it
will be the first time in their lives that another person has truly listened
for more than five minutes.”
To listen. That can sound like a passive exercise. Let the
other talk. Don’t say much. Smile and nod from time to time. Maybe even use
listening posture. Or if not simply passive, active listening often supposes
engagement: analysis, or an effort to problem-solve. Or to teach, impart some
word of wisdom.
But is that real listening?
No. To truly listen, to engage in that life-giving discipline, is a
battle of the soul. It is to enter into and walk alongside on the life-journey
of another. It means that I choose to trust that the Spirit of God indwells and
is at work within the one I accompany. And that the Spirit is fully able to
complete all that has begun in the soul of the one who shares his or her story
with me--without me standing in the path to figure things out and interject my
fallen analysis of what needs to happen. My role is to attend, to accompany, to
enter into the speaker’s story with empathy, compassion and prayer. To provide companionship and support that will
help that dear one journey beyond where he or she might otherwise go. And to
stay out of the way as best I can.
Why is that so hard? A battle of my very soul? Here are
pieces of it:
·
I must lay aside myself. That includes my story,
my similar (or very different) journey and how it turned out and what I learned.
It includes my stereotypes and prejudices. My revulsions, too. As the other’s
story unfolds I am called to a vigilance that notices when these things begin
to rise in me, looks at them and consciously lay them aside to return my focus
to Jesus and to this one He loves. I battle to let this be the other’s story
alone.
·
I must lay aside my need to feel relevant. For
that need tempts me to speak things other than the Spirit has given, to manufacture
wisdom, to push so that I can see movement in the other’s journey. Anything
that might satisfy me that my presence and engagement has made a difference. I
battle to become lesser so that Christ will be magnified.
·
I must lay aside my agenda, my sense of where this
story needs to go, how it should be resolved. To really listen is to be willing
to wait, to accept that what is obvious to me may take time to emerge in the
heart of the one I attend. To really listen is to lay aside my need to tell all
I know. I battle to walk alongside rather than behind to push or in front to
guide.
·
I must be willing to encourage the speaker to
stay in the crucible, or to call him or her back to it, yet also be willing to
continue to listen, to pray, and to love if the dear one flees. I battle with
the desire to flee the refiner’s fire.
·
I must be willing to be rejected, irrelevant, or
even disliked. For inasmuch as I attend both the speaker and the Lord I may
become identified with what or Who the speaker resists. I battle to lay aside
ego and identify with Jesus.
·
I must be willing to let the speaker go. I battle the attachment that refuses to leave
the dear one to Christ alone.
It is not that I am passive, or that I never speak. The call
to is pray and attend. To apply knowledge and wisdom to what I see emerging. To
discern what resonates as true and where truth is being resisted, submerged, or
even denied. My call is to notice and to sometimes know, but always with
compassion and never with judgment or condemnation. To see without speaking all
that I see, willing to wait for the one who is living the story to notice when
he or she is ready.
To truly listen also requires occasional speaking. Sometimes
the listener speaks simply to clarify, or to affirm attention and alongside-presence.
Sometimes listeners ask questions, not to satisfy personal curiosity or to
direct the speaker’s story, but to invite the speaker deeper into places that
may need more attention, places to slow down and notice what has been
overlooked. Sometimes I speak what I think I have noticed…carefully, and not as
to give an answer, but to test a theory. “Could it be that in this you have
more freedom than you think you have?” “Could it be that this you speak of is
life-giving and worthy of more time and attention?” “Could it be that you carry
anger towards that person that you are not aware of?” “Does it feel to you like
that is the real reason?” Sometimes a listener affirms what resonates as true,
as life-giving movement.
With some I accompany the listening is joy. So clear is the
dear one’s seeking, so pure the heart. With others, well, we all have times
when we become mired in self-pity, depression, lethargy, anger and hurt, or
blindness to our own part in our suffering. We get stuck. We resist the truth
we see, plant our feet, and refuse to move because our hearts ache and our
strength is small. Depths of compassion, patience, and willingness to wait
become part of the listener’s inner struggle.
And that is where I started. The soul-battle of the
spiritual listener demands constant prayer, high alert, heavy expense of
energy, detachment from results and from people who need to find their firm
attachment to Jesus. And time. Did I mention time? And did I mention how often
I experience set-backs, notice places I’ve slipped and lost ground?
But what privilege to watch the Spirit move, to be once
again surprised at the freshness of that wind blowing through a life and out
into the world that dear one will engage. It is a soul-stretching battle,
completely worthy of every searing ounce of engagement one can give.
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