Life is what we are alive to. It is not length but breadth...Be alive to...goodness, kindness, purity, love, history, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God, and eternal hope. (Maltbie D. Babcock)
Listening is the most important thing you can do in your life.
(wow, I really just wrote that).
Even as I commit that thought to writing and, in this context, to cyberspace, I don't often live like I believe it. In fact, I'm very bad at listening sometimes. Listening to my mom's directions, listening to a friend's advice or exhortation, listening to God....I am talking about all types of listening. Honestly, it's been a subject of teaching ever since going to college, and it's one thing I'm sure I'll be learning about until the day I can't humanly do it any longer. In France, I seem to have learned more about it than I first realized. Probably because I actually listened.
My life in France was not one grand vacation, much to the contrary of one's assumptions when I consistently updated this blog with tales of travel and hiking and nothing of the sort about studying or stressing. Yet I did find that it's pace gave me much more opportunity to practice the art of listening. And honestly, as I actually did it, it's importance evolved...to the point where I come home and make grand statements like "listening is the most important thing you can do in your life." It was interesting how listening could aid in so many life contexts in France. In a revelation that didn't occur all at once, but rather unfolded slowly over the course of many different conversations and frustrating days of french speaking (attempts), I learned that listening was the best way to learn this language. What a marvelous realization. It gave me the chance to stop running up to the measuring tape every other day to see how much I'd grown in my french ability (which was definitely measured at first in inches and not feet). Instead, I sort of told my mind to shut down when I was surrounded by french speakers, to stop thinking of the next thing I was going to say or how that one verb was conjugated in the subjunctive. I told it to listen. To pick up on the nuances. To hear the accent, to really hear it. To learn the language using a philosophy that was altogether secondary, slowly becoming altogether essential. And it worked. I learned more when I listened. I borrowed the phone books--the effortless accent and (equally effortless) grammatically perfect phrases-- and I dragged them to the measuring tape and I stood on them. My stature linguistically suddenly grew, but it wasn't because I had stretched further or pounded more vitamins. I was simply standing on the french spoken by the french.
Listening helped me grow in the language, and it was (and is) essential to growth in my faith. Truth is, listening often appears the most unneeded or unnatural of things. It seems unneeded--I don't think I give it a chance because I just don't do it...otherwise I'd probably see that it is most essential for living well, for living in joy, for living in peace. Listening also seems unnatural, mostly because I come to God so often with my meager knowledge and my deep desires and I think it better to tell Him how I want Him to work...because in many ways, I'm scared to hear how He wants to work or who He wants me to love. I never give Him a chance to tell me; instead, I flood His ears with my requests and then walk away.
I had more 'still' times this semester, when I slowed down intentionally and listened. It was during those times that I was profoundly encouraged, I was redirected to better goals, and I was led by the Shepherd...not in a figurative way, an 'oh that's nice to think of God guiding us' way, but in a real, concrete way. Conversations happened because I listened. Habits were changed because I listened. My heart was directed back towards the character of God because I listened. And thank goodness I directed my heart towards that listening....I would have missed so much.
God has divine secrets to whisper to us. Life is about perfecting the art and patience of listening. I don't think I'll ever get there completely, but I do want to internalize it's importance and live in it's goodness.
Life is what we are alive to. For me, I am most alive when I am listening.
What I am trying to do is get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so that you can respond to God's giving. Matthew 6:32
1 comment:
Thanks for all the reminders. I had forgotten so many of the things I learned in France, but have been blissfully reminded by yourself. Thank you.
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