“Being heard is so close to being loved, that
for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.”
—
David Augsburger
Love is one of humankind’s
greatest mysteries.
Just how do we love?
– the unlovable, the one who has betrayed us, the person who returns
ambivalence for our love, or the person we are paired to who suddenly or
inexplicably changes... these and so many more scenarios are pitted against
love.
It can seem
impossible to love in some circumstances.
But it is always
possible to love, as God is love, and our good Lord may make the seeming
impossible possible anytime. But what is the key to love? How do divest the
power of God and love, even against the odds?
***
Everyone wants to be heard; to be
understood.
If someone gets alongside us and
genuinely listens and hears us, they
gain our trust and we respect them. That’s because they have respected us.
If we, likewise, are to gain the
trust of others, we will need to respect them so much as to get inside them and
understand them. Listening so we hear and more fully understand is not hard; it
relies on mindfulness as we focus and concentrate on the person before us. We
focus well enough that all other distractions to hear them are screened out as
irrelevant.
Hearing well is a practiced
skill, and the best of shepherds become masters of it.
If being heard is being loved, we
have found possibly the most powerful instrument on earth as it is in heaven.
As we ‘hear’ we listen to the
words spoken, their tone, inflection, pace, emotion, body language, and what is being said as well as on what is
not being said.
To hear someone where they feel
understood is a masterstroke of human relationship.
When we hear with all of our
being we love. When we are heard with all of someone’s attention, that’s what
it’s like to feel loved. To be able to bless someone by truly hearing and
understanding them is to be God’s instrument of peace and joy.
***
QUESTIONS in REVIEW:
1. In the David Augsburger quote,
what of it do you agree with and what of it do you disagree with?
2. What barriers do you find are
hardest to overcome in actively listening with mindfulness?
3. How do you get over the
ambivalence of others who seem uninterested in you, whilst committing to
listening to them?
© 2015 S. J. Wickham.
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