I Am A Listening!

Some have asked me to picture Fr. Basil. This was the largest picture I could manage with my own computer skills since I never took his picture when we were together.

Recently I was listening to someone tell me the official Catholic position on voting for someone who favors abortion. I found it rather astounding because I have on my desk at the present time then Cardinal Ratzinger's letter to the American Bishops, through Cardinal McCarrick, expressing his opinion in this matter. Surely was not the same thing that the person telling me the Church position. Likewise someone told me of an accident that happened recently. Later in the day, I heard a story from a relative about the same accident. I felt like asking if it is true that both were at the same accident!

As Fr. Basil notes (p. 21), often stories told by two or three people are usually the same in essence but they are somewhat different. How does that come about? So often we filter what we hear! Let me repeat: so often we filter what we hear. How we listen, "the listening that we are," is no simple reality. How you and I become the listening that we are today is the product of a lifetime of experience.

Fr. Basil also points out that be "a listening" is much more than hearing. It is more than how we hear: how we see, how we smell, how we taste. In addition to the externals, our inner voices listen for feelings, emotions, memories, ideas, and concepts ... as the Trappist points out.

Good St. Thomas Aquinas is known for the following sentence and thought: "Quidquid recipiture per modum recipientis recipitur." What Thomas was teaching is this: Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver." Let me offer one way of understanding what Thomas' thought is.

What meets up with the way we are a listen will be accepted. What does not fit, well, most likely it will be discarded very quickly.

If I am a rigid person, very little will ever get through the gates that lock out anything I don't believe. And, unfortunately, I become a person with some serious prejudices. Have you ever tried to get a relative to change a strongly held position about one of the "in-laws" that became a part of the family? Good luck!

Fr. Pennington taught that those who tend to be "more open," willing to listen to and consider another point of view, have the opportunity to expand the parameters of their way of listening.

What is important for understanding our true and our false selves, is that we are not afraid of, first of all, trying to understand how we are a certain listening (p. 25). A la Pennington, when we actually become aware of my listening, we have taken "the first step on our journey toward embracing my true self. Like a baby who takes those that first step, we, too, know that I can leave behind me any fears about what I can not do.

Likewise, even though I recognize the listening that I am, I have to also realize that it is "partial." A conversation at my brother's home recently: "Mom, I am going over to Sue's house." (Mom) "Let's get your Dad here and talk about this. You know there are some concerns we have. But we want to hear fully your desires. When we have talked about it, perhaps we can come to a resolution that is good for all of us."

So, before getting into a good session of prayer, it is so important to understand who I am. Learning to know "how I am 'a listening' will great open our hearts to God's speaking to me, to the Holy Spirit endeavoring to let us see more deeply who we are.
Today both principal candidates for the November election were speaking publicly about what each was planning to do in order to save the economy. Do you think that the person who is a dyed in the wool Republican is going to give Senator Obama any credence in what he says and proposes? Likewise the Obamaite will have heard Senator McQuain's proposals and found very little if any items of credibility.