How to be a better listener

Given the silence theme of my week, when I came across this TED Talk by sound expert Julian Treasure, I decided to give the video the eight minutes.

I was not disappointed.

Mr. Treasure begins the video with the words, 'We are losing our listening.' I could not agree more. He goes on to talk about the world we around us, how we listen to it, and how to become better listeners.

The first of the five exercises designed to help us listen better is [*spoiler alert*] silence.

Enjoy this, it's well worth the almost eight minutes.

Unafraid of What Is Difficult

You know how at times it seems like there is Something out there trying to send you a message?

Yeah, me too.

After yesterday's Life Journal entry, the one from Psalm 62, about silence and waiting, when I turned on my Kobo this morning, to read today's reading from, A Year With Rilke, this is what greeted me:

Unafraid of What Is Difficult
Don't be confused by the nature of solitude, when something inside you wants to break free from your loneliness. This very wish, when you use it as a tool for understanding, can illumine your solitude and expand it to include all that it is. Bound by conventions, people tend to reach for what is easy. It is clear, however, that here we must be unafraid of what is difficult. For all living things in nature must unfold in their particular way and become themselves at any cost and despite all opposition.

—Rainier Maria Rilke

Rome, May 14, 1904
Letters To A Young Poet

Yes, silence and solitude—heck—ALL the spiritual disciplines are difficult. Everything that causes you to grow has difficulty that comes automatically with it. I don't need to discipline myself to eat potato chips; that comes perfectly naturally to me. But I do need to push myself to eat broccoli.

So, while yesterday's goal of the week may not have started out well, I am continuing to press on...

Silence & Waiting {#259-269}

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. {Psalm 62:1}

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. {Psalm 62:5}

Waiting and silence.

To be honest, not exactly my two favorite things.

I've wrestled with waiting, and I know its importance. I understand that waiting isn't always a spectator sport, that sometimes, when you are waiting for something, the most important thing you can do is to keep living, keep learning, so that when the thing you are waiting for arrives, you are ready.

But the addition of silence to the equation changes things immensely.

Silence—the removal of noise and distractions and diversions, all the things that can help one forget that they might actually be waiting for, or lacking something—leaves just me, sitting before God, no toys to amuse me, no words to nothing to draw God's attention away from all the areas that I still don't trust, still am not obedient, still am lacking.

Waiting in silence removed the facade of words that I tend to use to attempt to justify my bad ideas and actions, or excuse my bad decisions.

Silence is a game-changer.

I am comfortable with noise. I get noise. When I am working, there is seldom time when I do not have music, or a movie, or a podcast playing in the background. As a young girl with three brothers who had an uncanny ability to make a ridiculous amount of noise, when they wanted my attention, and I wanted to read, I would curl up in front of our stereo's huge speakers, my left ear pressed against the music, a finger in my other ear, and happily read for hours.

Again, I am comfortable with noise.

But if you believe David's words above, silence needs to go hand in hand with waiting, to give us the vitally important things we need for our daily lives—things like hope and salvation. And I do believe this, it is just hard.

So, this week, I am practicing the spiritual discipline of silence. The New Living Translation of Psalm 62:5 reads, "Let all that I am wait quietly before God."

This is my goal for this week.

* * * * *

Today I am thankful for...

259:: homemade strawberry jam to share with friends.
260:: COBS cranberry custard scone and tea.

261:: baking mini jam tarts for coworkers.
262:: a quiet evening at home to attempt to get my world back to 'normal'.

263:: having the opportunity to read and review some amazing books.

264:: a walk through the Farmer's Market.

265:: getting to have one more movie night with Alicia before she heads back to Senegal.

266:: my dear friend Alicia herself, who has a beautiful hospitality of presence, you cannot help but feel comfortable and at home with her.

267:: my weekly coffee date with Laura, where we fix the world and laugh at ourselves.

268:: a holiday Monday giving me an opportunity to do all the little things that I need to before surgery later this month.

269:: for the reminder to wait in silence before my God.

{nothing}

There are some days that the words just won't come.

Maybe it is because I let the busyness of life win. Perhaps I simply have nothing to say...

...or maybe it is really because there are days when I fear what is inside, and somehow believe that if I let it out, these things I don't even know I want to set free will define me. judge me. find me wanting.

On these days, perhaps it is best to let someone else do the talking for me. Who better than Madeleine L'Engle?

I will have nothing to do with a God who cares only occasionally. I need a God who is with us always, everywhere, in the deepest depths as well as the highest heights. It is when things go wrong, when good things do not happen, when our prayers seem to have been lost, that God is most present. We do not need the sheltering wings when things go smoothly. We are closest to God in the darkness, stumbling along blindly. —Madeleine L'Engle

Where would I be without a full-time God?

I don't think I want to know.

static

why is it that when you have to get up early in the morning, sleep becomes as elusive and mythical as a unicorn?

there are times when i read something, particularly something exceptionally brilliant, that i cannot help but wishing that i had written it. such is the case with most of Rilke's works. poetry, prose, it matters not, the sheer level of his brilliance always leaves me speechless. especially in the presence of words such as these...

The Book of a Monastic Life, I, 7
—Ranier Maria Rilke, from The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,
and the static my senses make—
if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake—

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could posess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all the lives,
in gladness.

so much brilliance. so much insight. so much perfection.

this love poem to God— written so many years ago, in a language i do not understand, by a man i would have loved to have met— is exactly where this dark night finds me.