On listening well:

“One of the biggest needs in America is to listen better to one another. To slow down and listen to others well. It gives God room to be in the room. And it consecrates conversation. Listening well is a spiritual practice, and one of the greatest gifts we give to one another.” Eugene Peterson.

I remember in one of the chapters in one of my dad’s books, i wrote a poem about his gift of listening to me way past dark. In the evening, my dad and I would stay up talking together. Me talking mainly, and him listening. God bless him. He birthed a babbling brook!

But those times together internalized a deep sense of being heard and seen in my inner heart. And it affirmed a sturdy sense of self. This is what father’s can do—affirm your existence by tuning in. Maybe that’s the highest job. But this is also what we can do for one another daily. Valuing another enough to really slow down and listen well is healing.

So many people I work with have really never been heard well, tuned into, depth listened to. And i love listening to those people, learning to honor their own narratives. To sense the inner cadences of their stories. The gift of listening to one another changes lives, calms anger, let’s pain be grieved, and brings humor back to life.

I was blessed to have a listening father in life, but many weren’t. It’s a very simple gift to listen well to others, but it changes lives.

It is one of the largest love gifts i got from my dad, to feel heard, seen, listened to, and it is one of the most useful ways of actually helping others. Being present in love with others can’t be overrated. My dad listens really well, that might be the part of his life which has impacted me the most in my own development.

All the spiritually mature people I’ve ever met, listen well. They are slow enough inside to pause and be with others. They value beholding others deeply. The space they create by listening allows others to become, to come home to themselves. And that walks a long way in life!

This is why i like reading books and learning from those who have learned to listen well. Some film makers have this gift of depth beholding, many ministers and spiritual teachers do: like Henri Nouwen and others, who wrote lots about how to listen and encounter others well—deep to deep heart to heart, or as Martin Buber put it, I to thou! Those types of encounters make us more fully human, more ourselves. Being listened to from the heart affirms and even calls forth true identity. It’s one of the simplest and most profound gifts we can give one another, for listening is one of Love’s favorite mediums.

“Immature teachers don’t ask this question—is God giving what I carry to this person right now in their life? Or am i just needing to share it. Or is He imparting another aspect of Himself, through someone else. They just want to teach what they carry, regardless of whether their seeds are useful. But the wise teacher waits for the good soil, the teachable student who both needs and wants to learn what they carry! And the wise teacher then learns what they themselves have to teach in wisdom.”
(Medieval monk scholar from a diary entry called, “Be careful when and who you teach”. If your seeds are meant for that person, you also will be transformed by it as well, was his basic idea. Nice!)

Since I’m doing more counseling this season, thought I’d share…
Five (5 1/2) questions I always ask when counseling folks:

Where do you see yourself in your own story? (assuming they can see their story and believe they are one!)
What’s the next chapter?
What are the current and past blocks to walking into the next chapter?
Where are you spiritually alive and growing?
How do you interpret your life?
What is your “upper story” for interpreting—your grand narrative?
How does your story fit into that grander narrative?

After prayer beforehand, I always start there, and see what emerges in conversation! I usually use the arts in counseling, asking folks to make some art about where they are now, and what they see next. An image of now and next helps!

If they are blocked, often the art in collaboration with The Spirit, will by pass it and give them an image of the next season, so they can move forward, or work on removing the blocks themselves. The more I counsel people, the more i see the same patterns. What a joy to help someone move forward in their narratives! It’s been my chief joy lately!

I mainly like teaching or counseling people towards living from their truer self, or deeper self; how to have an authentic spirituality; how to keep growing spiritually; and how to integrate their creativity with their faith or spirituality. These are my life topics, and passion points i keep returning to. I’m fascinated by true identity and authentic expression. How our creativity can flow from our true self.

“What is at stake here is the tendency for human beings to have spirituality without God. That’s most often the present occupation, or what goes by the name spirituality, but it lacks true transformational power. This is why we talk about actual formation of His Life in people, true christian spirituality is a way of union, that leads to incarnation ethics! One cannot self generate spiritual growth, it grows from authentic relationship.” Dallas Willard.

True spirituality from a christ-centered perspective, is Him making us more of who we really are by baptizing us into His Actual Name and Life, as He forms more of Himself into more of who we really are! We become our true selves by losing our false selves, as Merton might put it. We take off the old person and put on the new person actively, as St Paul put it. We find our names by entering more deeply into the Life of the Namer. That’s a way of true identity offered in Christ-ianity. In some sense, He is making us more of who He is, and in that process our own white stone room names get revealed over time, even to ourselves!

I often return to my pet life topics: spiritual growth, integration of identity and creativity, and authentic spirituality, and useful counseling. I like collecting them from all over, whoever moves in wisdom, or the truer spirituality of their own traditions. Love collecting quotes around these topics. I’ve got a whole box full!

Been thinking again about the ministry of true identity this week:

“Can we be so much ourselves, so fully in our real story, that our presence alters the atmosphere and gives permission to others to be. The problem is rarely, do we have the right information, it is usually that we are not being ourselves fully enough, to convince others to live more fully!” Art Monticus.

I would add, can our testimony be so electrically our true selves, so true to what actually is, that we ignite true identity around us! To be living portents or signs, as King David put it. Can we attest that Reality is so. So that God can argue from what actually is, using us as a point, and pointer to what is True!

Can our identities themselves, and our standing and living from our new selves in freedom become the message, teaching the gospel also in silence. Jesus used words and being, His Presence often was the message, and transformative container.

Authentic spirituality is a word and way on earth, as someone must’ve said by now. Can we become ministers of being in this way?! Can we authenticate the planet by having our presence in Presence, would be another way of heading at it!

Jeremiah, Paul, David (some of my heroes; some of the Johnny Cash’s of scriptures! Living parables!) all had ministries of identity. There lives symbolized and participated in their message! Like Paul Tillich pointed out: “True symbols participate the Reality to which they point!”. Who they were, was part of their message in a unique way.

I’ve always aspired to that way. To be living words. We are more than carriers of information, we are part of the information. His living collection of poetry!

We hear King David singing the song of himself from the perspective of God in Psalm 139! This is James Brown without the ego. This is Walt Whitman singing the song of himself from the right angle or angel! Wonderful poems we are! To be pronounced freely out loud!

More soon as I’m warming up for a talk on identity and art, and authentic spirituality. All my favorite topics!

Among other things…

Marriage is teaching me things and people aren’t disposable like I’ve treated my shoes or even lots of stuff. It’s life long and you have to keep tending it.

It’s a good practice in indisposability! No one gets discarded! Also marriage fights consumer mentality-looking at others primarily in terms of my needs and wants, desires. I-it-ing others rather than I-thou-ing them, as Buber would put it.

Marriage helps us overcome the commodification of identity. I cannot treat you as a product to be bought and sold and used if we are married. I have to treat you as a whole person, who, like me, is becoming more themselves daily.

For some seasons, we’re not “worth” much in a business sense anyways! Maybe we are sick, or going through healing, and not much use to others. Then, to still love one another, is something like faith. That each of us is still worth everything, even dying for in our weakest state and moments! Each of us poems forever. Included in the collection of poetry by God.

When you commit to care for someone for life, it shifts something in your orientation. You consider how to steward the other’s whole lifecycle less and less selfishly. There’s many ways to learn that, but marriage is a good one.

A great challenge in a disposable, get the next big thing, as soon as you want it, culture. Moves in the opposite manner, marriage. That’s why it’s a high metaphor, a life long formational teaching. And a form of suffering, or dying to self towards and into more wholeness! Marriage is a great rehearsal for eternal life!

Marriage is also a means to the formation of God in us. It is a high medium of encountering and being transformed by Him, as we offer our lives to one another. It’s an accelerated route to spiritual growth, in other words! It’s easy and necessary to die quickly to self in marriage if you want it to work.

Marriage is a tabernacle to meet God in.

Some people are so controlled-defined by other-so therefore controlling, in basic competition to be. Perhaps never welcomed in. So boxed in by roles, traditions, professions, the perceptions of others. While all the while, our true identity is hovering over our hearts as the Tone of Love-something most familiar and most strange- already whispering our forever names.

Let’s whisper with The Tone of Love into one another our forever names! Join in that holy chorus of the thousand thoughts spoken over each of us hourly! That’s how love listens.

My wife saw me today, as we were talking beneath a local tree….

Today she saw me-
a native american old world singer of words
sitting beneath a Texas tree ironically
The old growth live oak represents what is here forever
(this part of God on this land)
But, me i could sit beneath any type of tree, i like so many aspects of God
( i prefer the ones in scotland)
and still be me, my rainbow feathers unfurling slowly in prairie winds here,
from somewhere Unseen beneath the trees of every nation, in the long wind,
each of us foreigners somehow again, and at home. Each of us also too tall for here.

Every place is an ironic setting for you, she said
I agreed, but added, yet, each is a poem which goes on, forever.
And each tree is uniquely sacred
worth seeing home, back to itself that is. But, anyway
Thanks for seeing me beneath a particular tree somewhere today my Love.

For incarnation is the only option for us now,
and is the one my Master choose somehow,
and He hides in every garden and sits beneath each type of tree.
And just enjoys me being me. And you my love are a shining Gem
within His Tender Palms. And this moment has become sacred now again
to Him who is always with us when we see Him in one another through love.

You don’t live in world boxes of men, she continued,
all the world is an open stage, a tabernacle of potential meeting
…you live from another place by meeting Him through everything
life is ironic immersion to you, so you stay alive and playful while here
What was the other option, i asked…being seated above while walking on earth was the given map for us. We exist in a bigger context than here
is my testimony, i suppose.

But the proof is sitting well beneath
particular trees on a Sunday afternoon in Texas light.

Sometimes, Sundays for us is just about us seeing one another spiritually again! It is good to be reminded of the poems we each are, and keeps us going as we work on the daily scars of life down here. To be reminded, by sight, of who one another really is, helps us motivate to steward one another home, to our true selves through night. Nice to see one another from time to time. And today my wife saw me beneath a particular Texas tree! Keep marriage alive to stop and see one another as poems again, and sigh!

People are epic poems! My wife often says you see people as big as they really are, so it comes across as hyperbole!

I really do see and read people, and try to live as a parable. I’ve never met someone who was not an epic poem! Each of us an endless song worth be-holding and singing, learning from, forever! And tragic comedies us all as well!

People really are words and parables if you read them deeply enough! People are great art and I’m an art appreciator! And each is unique and worth stopping the universe to behold or encounter in Love. To read the Tone of God through, that is!

Obviously part of my motivation in life is seeing and hearing people deeply and in thanks, and meeting God in that depth dialogue. To have depth to depth dialogue with one another, transforms us both towards our better selves.

People and cities become part of your spirituality when you read them as tabernacle (places of meeting) poems! We’re His poems after all. So I’m just reading a poetry collection by God down here. And, i love poetry!! No matter whether its free verse or has broken lines! Healing people, is like healing language itself! Restoring Word to word, breath to syllable…