Listening

“Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Churches”. I have heard those words hundreds of times but I have never given much thought to what it means to have an “ear to listen”. I know that I am often guilty of “selective hearing”, (hearing only what I want to hear and filtering out everything else). It is a bad habit, especially in the dimension of the Spirit.

But I am trying, learning to be attentive and to listen in a different way. I am learning to listen closely to my life and the lives of those around me. It is difficult. It requires patience because I have to move beyond the shallow and superficial and struggle to understand an unfamiliar language. It takes courage because I have to wait as other hearts and souls whisper or speak or scream out things that are not easy to embrace but are definitely honest-to-God truth.

What I am hearing the Spirit say through lives and hearts these days is: “I am doing something new”. It is not a threat. It is not a condemnation of what has been or is now. It is not an affirmation that a few people have been “right” all along while the rest of us have been terribly “wrong”. It is an invitation to be a part of something new and to risk being transformed in the process.