Soul Matters
October:
The practice of
Deep Listening
Listening helps us find our way. The listening of therapists allows us to navigate our way through life. We turn to prayer to hear God’s guidance. We listen to experts so we can get ahead. Like a flashlight that leads us through the darkness, listening helps us stay on course. And yet maybe there’s more to it than that. What if listening doesn’t just guide us through the world but also creates our world? That sacred space of being deeply listened to isn’t just calling us home; it is home. We don’t have conversations; we are our conversations. Listening literally constructs the world we live in. And whom we become. One wonders if this is why the poet Joyce Sutphen says, “Listen carefully. Your whole life might depend on what you hear.”
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​-- Soul Matters (www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com)
For Silences To Sing
By Robert Lavett Smith
October is devoted to deep listening,
A sober month when songbirds all fall still,
Though raucous ravens scold us as they will,
Wet light on their dark feathers glistening.
Now is the time for silences to sing.
The faintest scurrying can swell to fill
Complacent places, auguring a chill
We cannot yet foresee but fall is coming.
October is the moment when the Dead,
Amid the quiet splendor of decay,
Pledge to receive us in the years ahead.
No words accompany the things they say;
We learn to listen with our hearts instead
Of hearing what the dry leaves bear away.
September:
The practice of Invitation
What is in an invitation? It looks so simple—the envelope or virtual envelope we get with the invitation to join in some moment or adventure? A movie, a party? Or the hand extended from someone on bended knee and the larger invitation to join in a life together: Will you marry me? Seems so simple. Just an invitation. Want to join this church? Be my friend? Go climb a mountain? Get an ice cream? What is written and tucked in an invitation if it is real and with the potential to welcome the fullness of everyone invited to be in an authentic relationship? What does the practice of invitation, the spiritual practice of it, say about what we believe invitation requires of us?
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