Day 183 - Listening with Love

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

      Listening with the ears of our hearts, recognizing need before it can even be expressed is surely a great gift of the Servant's Heart. This week I have listened for the sounds of a 20-month-old's awakening, sometimes in the middle of night, always at daybreak. Often the sounds are clearly a search for the familiar face and sweet smile of his mom; other times this young adventurer-explorer awakens with abject joy in the dancing light that sneaks its way through the shutters making patterns on the wall that tell a great story. He hears airplanes so distant my ears and eyes cannot even conceive of and points, looks, and he waits . . . until my attention and my understanding can meet him at his place of wonder.

     Both my 95-year-old mother in law who lives with us and my young grandson visiting for a few days are teaching me to to watch, to wait, to listen in new ways. Poet William Stafford writes of listening with ears that must be of the heart:

"My father could hear a little animal step,/ or a moth in the dark against the screen,/ and every far sound called the listening out/ into places where the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night/ than came to our porch for us on the wind;/ we would watch him look up and his face go keen/ till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father heard so much that we still stand/ inviting the quiet by turning the face,/ waiting for a time when something in the night/ will touch us too from that other place."

Watching shadows cross the face, translating syllables into words, asking and then asking again so that need may be met - is this not what our days of giving care are all about? What does your heart hear today that touches you "from that other place?"

Comments

[~liz Wessel]

I will pay attention today as I keep company with your question. Thank you for the gift of this lovely reflection and poem.
Yesterday, I watched as butterfly danced about and landed on a tree leaf nearby. She folded her wings shut and rested there for a while. I feel a sense of affirmation and wonder when a butterfly comes to visit me with a sign of hope on her wings.
Sometimes when I close my eyes and sit tall and still, receptive and listening, it comes in a flash of insight or as an answer to a question.
I work with a palliative care physician Dr. Brian Boyd. He is very smart, and kind, and he uses his expertise to help people who are experiencing pain or other difficult symptoms. Often, he closes his eyes as he listens to the patient’s story.
I find when I close my eyes, I can see more clearly.

[EstherGrace]

Fascinating! I find I listen and see in pictures. I have been in practice for 25 years. I can no longer directly quote my clients. I feel along my way into supporting and healing the places of vulnerability and pain.

[Victoria Facey]

Today my heart hears my childhood; the red water hydrant outside our apartment building in Chicago and the explosion of kids jumping in the heat to the pulse of the gushing water. The outdoor sounds of childhood and the laps of elders we sat in with joyful expectations of stories and affection.

Thank you for reminding us of days gone by and family who we looked up to in our wonder and their wisdom.