Listen as activity

Listening as Spiritual Hospitality

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you. Henri Nouwen - Bread for the Journey

I love to sit back and listen, often without looking so I can hear even more intently. If only people would be willing to listen more and speak less. But there is also a deeper listening, which is active and not passive and that is a spiritual attentiveness. In spiritual direction it is called the contemplative stance, a listening to another with attentiveness to yourself and your relationship to the Spirit within you. Strangely this does not reduce being there for the other person but extends the community being available for the speaker.

In my English conversation classes I teach English as a Second Language learners the unwritten rules of English conversation. Firstly, native English speakers hate silence and they will fill it after only 4 seconds. Secondly, native speakers don't listen but are preparing to interrupt with what they want to say. Thirdly, native speakers also attempt to hijack a conversation and take it somewhere else by changing the subject. You only have to listen carefully to group talking or even to yourself to know the truth of these rules. Yet listening offers so much to others.

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry James 1:19