At the heart of Christian Spirituality is the idea of “listening.” The very first word of Benedict’s, Rule of Life is the word, “listen.” Those who have gone before us have again, and again stressed the importance of being able to “hear” from our own life (our needs, desires, and concerns) and from the voice of our Loving Father.

In our age, we don’t seem to do so well in the area of listening. The result for this failure is a lack of depth in our spiritual life. We are out of touch with what is really real. We are disconnected from what matters most. We are distant from the heart and voice of our Living God. As T. S. Eliot observes we live, “distracted by distractions to avoid our distractions.”

This leads me to Henri Nouwen’s observations about listening.

“The first discipline is listening. The word listening in Latin is audire. And if you listen with great attention the words are ob audire. That is the word for “obedience.” The word obedience means listening. If you are not listening, you are deaf. The Latin word for deaf is surdus, and if you’re actually deaf, you’re ab surdus. The “absurd” life is a life in which you’re not listening. An obedient life is a life in which you are listening.”

May we learn to listen. May we avoid lives of absurdity. May we pray that God will help us to be alert, aware and attentive to life and to His voice. This is the spiritual life, a life that listens. I will add a couple of ways to help “tune our ears” that have helped others in developing a “life that listens,” in the days ahead.