I've developed an admiration for people who can join a conversation without taking over.  Quiet humility realizes others are amazingly creative with vast internal landscapes and clever ways of describing common experience that can only be accessed by listening carefully. 

I heard someone say, "Being listened too and being loved are so similar most people can't tell the difference."

In the midst of a lot of voices telling us what additional task we need to accomplish to find peace in an already frenetic schedule; telling us what we need to believe to earn God's blessing; telling us what we need to buy to make life easier; telling us what we need to say to feel important ... perhaps what would be best for our being would be to listen for awhile to a different conversation.

September 13, 2010 One of my favorite contemporary writers, Joan Chittister, offers this;

 "Hospitality is one form of worship,” the rabbis wrote.  Hospitality in a culture of violence and strangers and anonymity has become the art of making good connections at good cocktail parties. We don’t talk in elevators, we don’t know the security guard’s name, we don’t invite even the neighbors in to the sanctuary of our selves. Their children get sick and their parents die and all we do is watch the comings and goings from behind heavy blinds.

“In India,” Ram Dass writes, “when people meet and part they often say, ‘Namaste,’ which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.…‘Namaste.’” In Benedictine spirituality, too, hospitality is clearly meant to be more than an open door. It is an acknowledgment of the gifts the stranger brings. “By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration…Christ is to be adored and welcomed in them.”

For the Benedictine heart the reception of the poor is an essential part of going to God. We cannot be too busy, too professional, too removed from the world of the poor to receive the poor and sustain the poor. Anything else, Benedict warns in a society that is by nature class-structured, is not hospitality. It is at best more protocol than piety. Those who can buy their comforts or demand their rights are simply receiving what they can get, with us or without us. Those who have been thrown upon the mercy of the world are the gauge of our open hearts.

It is an important distinction in a culture in which strangers are ignored and self-sufficiency is considered a sign of virtue and poverty is a synonym for failure. Hospitality for us may as much involve a change of attitudes and perspectives as it does a handout. To practice hospitality in our world, it may be necessary to evaluate all the laws and all the promotions and all the invitation lists of corporate and political society from the point of view of the people who never make the lists. Then hospitality may demand that we work to change things.

The fact is that we all have to learn to provide for others while maintaining the values and structures, the balance and depth, of our own lives. The community that is to greet the guest is not to barter its own identity in the name of the guest. On the contrary, if we become less than we must be then we will be no gift for the guest at all. Parents must parent, and all the good work in the world will not substitute for that. Wives and husbands must be present to the other, and all the needs in the world will not forgive that. Balance and order and prayer in the life of those who practice Benedictine spirituality are keys to being a genuine support in the lives of others. Somehow, we must take on the needs of the world with a humble heart. As Edward Everett Hale said, “I cannot do everything but I can do something, and what I can do I will do, so help me God.”  (You can find more of Joan's writing on her website: http://benetvision.org/Ideas_In_Passing/index.html)

August 23, 2010 Virginia Ramey Mollenkott writes, "Most of the discussion of prayer I've heard centered on whether God answers prayer and how we can know.  During the past decade I have come to believe prayer is not a matter of my calling in an attempt to get God's attention, but of my finally listening to the call of God, which has been constant, patient and insistent to my inner being.  In relationship to God I am not the seeker, the initiator, the one who loves more greatly.  In prayer, as in the whole story unfolded by Scripture, God is reaching out to me, speaking to me, and it is up to me to learn to be polite enough to pay attention.  When I do have something to say to God, I am offering a response to the divine initiative.  So the question of whether or not and how God answers prayer now seem to be bogus questions.  God speaks all right.  The question is do I listen, do I answer, do I respond to God's invitation?"

July 29, 2010 Eric sent this:  Growing up in Nebraska, I had the wonderful opportunity to show cattle as part of 4H.  I bought calves and raised them to be thirteen hundred pound steers, all the while preparing them to show.  This meant that I would attach a halter and lead rope when they were still small and teach them how to follow me.

In the beginning, I thought I had to hang on tight. The calves always jumped and ran, pulling me behind. I tried running and keeping up while searching for footing and a better grip.  More often than not I was dragged for a good distance until my grip gave way.  Mind you, this was all done in the holding pen where my calves ate, slept, and did their business. There were no toilets for cattle.  I was essentially battered and bruised being dragged through their manure. This is where I learned the art of holding on loosely.

The first thing I learned?   From the calf's perspective, I was running after him. 
The second thing I learned?  When the calf no longer felt tension on the rope, he generally stopped or slowed down, instead of trying to get away.

When show day arrived, I could lead my full grown calf anywhere.  I could let go of the lead rope completely and this very powerful animal would stand as if tethered to a post. I would put the lead rope in my hand and begin walking and without any tension on the rope, the steer would gently walk with me.

I wonder how much manure we have to get dragged through to finally realize that we might be better off holding on loosely in this life?  It happens at all levels of life. The more frantically we struggle to hold on to what we think we need to control, the more out of control things become.  It's just the nature of the beast.  Hold on loosely. 
Walk gently.

July 28, 2010  Still in a bit of a Wendell Berry mood.  "Willing to die, you give up your will, keep still until, moved by what moves all else, you move."

July 27, 2010 A good friend, Billy, posted this note on his Facebook page following heart surgery.

…they told me I would have good days followed by bad. Well no joke! After a great few days last week the weekend was a gut check reminder of how much healing remains.

When I went to the hospital to check in for my surgery they said it had been canceled. I was devastated, anxious, and afraid and wanted an explanation. I spoke to my surgeon the phone who said he was up all night saving some one’s life and that he would have to sleep before he saved mine. What a great answer! What a great reminder that the world does not revolve around me…or you. There is a clock that trumps ours every time.

Mostly recovery is boring. Yes, it hurts but this lessens in time and you get used to it. Yes I am exhausted so I sleep a lot. No I cannot sleep well at night so I sleep off an on most of the day. When I am fed up with being bored I feel a bit like a petulant child insisting the world go by my clock. I can remember our kids saying, “Daddy I’m bored” To which we replied “It’s alright to be bored.” “Daddy I’m cold.” “It’s alright to be cold.” “Daddy I’m hungry” “It’s alright to be hungry” No need to always jump to the rescue. It’s alright to live by a larger clock.

So I announce, “I’m bored, I hurt, I want to run” and God announces that it’s alright to be bored, to hurt and to want to run. It’s alright to wait to be healed. It’s alright to live by God’s clock instead of our own. Besides that we have little choice.

So what are you waiting for? Wait with patience and grace, your time will come. God’s clock may run on a different beat than ours but its beat is persistent and kind, merciful, gracious and somewhat insistent, announcing “It’s alright to wait.”

July 26, 2010 Wendell Berry has long held a quiet place in my soul.  Thinking The Peace of Wild Things:

     When despair for the world grows in me
      and I wake in the night at the least sound
      in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
      I go and lie down where the wood drake
      rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
      I come into the peace of wild things
      who do not tax their lives with forethought
      of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
      And I feel above me the day-blind stars
      waiting with their light. For a time
      I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. -- Wendell Berry