Faith and Sharing celebrated their twentieth year with a retreat in Montreal in July. Jean Vanier shared out of his experience in the Faith and Light and the L'Arche Communities around the world the healing power of the poor. "The power of the powerless is to touch people in their hearts ... We will be healed by the weak ... To love someone is to reveal they are important, to reveal their beauty, to spend time with them."
"Love for a weaker person must come from a heart that is fulfilled. That is why one needs family or community with real love linking people together. But even more than that, one needs a heart that is formed and filled by the love of God; a heart that has known the tenderness of God's love. Only then can he or she love fully, freely, with tenderness, with a love that gives life and freedom ... Jesus is silent, hidden in the Eucharist. We must be very attentive if we are to hear the call: "Come and follow me." The poor are also often very silent, hidden away from the crowds and from society, in institutions and asylums. We must be very attentive if we are to hear their call "Come and live with me." Jesus touches our heart if we take the time to listen, calling us to a commitment and to a relationship of tenderness and fidelity.
...Consider this then: That there is a level of truth, vitally important to human beings, which lies beyond the explainable, demonstrable natural world. In fact, this truth is often more important and sustaining to human beings because it is an eternal truth, not changeable, never at the mercy of different historical theories, or the whims of the scientist, or the observer of heavenly bodies. This truth, in a sense, is our spiritual food.
The function of faith is not to reduce mystery to rational clarity, but to integrate the unknown and the known together in a living whole, in which we are more and more able to transcend the limitations of our external self.
~ from NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION by Thomas Merton
A listening heart is always open, sensitive to the joy and pain of others, offering a space within itself for the other to enter. It gives each person what is so badly needed—an affirmation of their place in this world.
The discipline of silence was leading me not only to a keener attention to language but to an improved capacity for hearing. On silent Mondays, I began to listen differently—to myself, to others, and to the world around me. It was a listening I would call both active and without an agenda...I began to observe that when there was no expectation for me to respond, acknowledge, analyze...I listened differently. My ego relaxed... In silence I was hearing others more keenly and witnessing my own thoughts, too, and seeing how they served to separate or to connect me. I was learning not to turn away from the parts of myself that were difficult.
~ from LISTENING BELOW THE NOISE by Anne D. LeClaire
Monks take a vow of obedience...It means a loving listening: listening to the Word of God that comes to us moment by moment, listening to the message of the angel that comes to us hour by hour. The very word obedience means an intensive listening. The opposite of that obedience is absurdity, which means being deaf to life's challenges and meaning. We have the choice in our life between living with this loving listening or finding everything absurd...So the next time you say, "This is absurd," you might consider the more helpful question, "To what am I deaf here?"
~ from THE MUSIC OF SILENCE by David Steindl-Rast, O. S. B.
No one listens, they tell me, and so I listen...
and I tell them what they have just told me,
and I sit in silence listening to them,
letting them grieve.
