The Listener

 For who listens to us in all the world, whether he be friend or teacher, brother or father or mother, sister or neighbor, son or ruler or servant?

Does he listen, our advocate, or our husbands or wives, those who are dearest to us?

Do the stars listen, when we turn despairingly away from man, or the great winds, or the seas or the mountains?  To whom can any man say -- Here I am! Behold me in my nakedness, my wounds, my secret grief, my despair, my betrayal, my pain, my tongue which cannot express my sorrow, my terror, my abandonment.

Listen to me for a day -- an hour! -- a moment! lest I expire in my terrible wilderness, my lonely silence! O God, is there no one to listen?

Is there no one to listen? you ask.  Ah yes, there is one who listens, who will always listen.

Hasten to him, my friend. He waits on the hill for you.

For you alone.

-----Seneca

For about a year now, I have been going twice a week to adoration.  For those who are not Catholic, "adoration" refers to our practice of exposing the Blessed Sacrament, which we believe is Jesus' way of remaining with us forever:  God with us!  The consecrated bread  [Take and eat! This is my Body, given up for you!] is placed on the altar in a monstrance.  The faithful believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  During "adoration," we are invited to spend an hour with Jesus alone -- no religious service, no public prayer, no attention to anything other than a quiet hour alone with the Lord.  Many of us recall Jesus' request in the Garden of Gethsemene: Could you not watch one hour with me? 

Lately, I have been taking a small notebook with me to adoration.  First, I take the practice of St. Ignatius of Loyola:  Before I come to the place of prayer, I pause for the space of one Our Father and think how God is looking at me.  I find this practice most helpful.  Most of us, when we begin to pray imagine ourselves looking at God, but seeing from the other side is a whole new perspective.  It helps us to know that we are not "thinking about God" but rather encountering God in a very real way.

Because Ignatian spirituality is grounded in our deepest desires, praying out of who we really are grounds us in the present, keeping our prayer "real."  When I was a child, I didn't like the word "grace" because I never knew what it was, exactly.  I knew the catechism definition of grace: the unmerited favor of God, but I seriously doubt that any child has ever dissected the meaning of the word "favor" in real life.  As an adult, I understand from experience the "favor" of God -- I now know His loving Presence in every moment, circumstance, condition, happening, person, event, etc. of my life.  I now know that He has never left me alone, even when I wanted to go my own way and do my own thing -- He has been there, a waiting, acting Presence, a Listener, an Advocate, a Helper.

Now, in order to keep my prayer "real" when I go to adoration, I begin by making a list: On My Mind.  Since my list changes not only from week to week but from day to day, I date each list.  I have found it most helpful not to begin praying about things until I have completed the list -- sort of like taking everything out of your junk drawer before you separate the junk, discard the useless things, and re-organize the useful stuff.  So I list in no particular order everything on mind in the order it appears.  And then, once I have emptied the "junk drawer," I begin to look at everything I have written.

It is amazing how much peace this practice has brought to me.  I find that we carry a lot of clutter in our minds continuously.  Some of it is important; some, trivial -- but it is all shoved into the same space.  When I make my list, I find that it contains not only my own concerns, but also those of others.  I constantly hear and think about what is happening in other people's lives; I often tell them I will pray for them, but what that mostly means is that I will keep thinking about them --- and I do.  So it feels wonderful to put their names on my list, "sorting out the items," so to speak.  Then I can look at each one separately, peacefully, without having other concerns crowd out and demand attention away from that one person or concern.

When my knees began giving me trouble for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I was trying to "carry on," as the British would say, as if there were no implications for my way of life.  However, I was not fooling my mind; in the background were a thousand unvoiced and unexpressed concerns:  What if I could no longer garden and take care of the yard?  Would that mean we would have to sell the house and move?  Where would we go?  What about my love for travel?  Does this mean I can longer walk all day long and explore cities like Venice and Singapore?  What about exercise?  I love to walk a mile and half along the beach every day. 

All of these thoughts were filling my "junk drawer" to the point of overflowing.  But the problem is that this was just one category among many in the drawer:  friends, children, parish, other health issues, getting ready for company, etc.  

Now, twice a week, I go to adoration, where I empty out my junk drawer before the Lord, and together we go through each item on the list.  I put the concern before Him and seek His wisdom and guidance systematically.  Often, there are no words, just Presence, just "knowing," just Peace.  But when I wake up the next morning, I know for sure that I have been to the Doctor, so to speak.  I can feel the re-organization of my mind, of my body, of my soul.  I know that I am not alone, that Someone has taken up all the concerns of my life, as Scripture tells us.  

Somewhere in my childhood, I read The Listener by Taylor Caldwell.  Having been encouraged by the nuns to spend a few minutes before the Blessed Sacrament, I assumed that the Listener in her book was Jesus.  Reading reviews of the book today, along with Caldwell's history, I now know that is not necessarily the case.  In fact, I'm planning to re-read the book now from an adult perspective.  However, in my mind, Jesus has indeed become The Listener, and the twice-weekly sessions I have with Him are beyond the price of both pearls and any psychiatrist you can name!