I Kings 3:5, 7-12 / Rom 8:26-27 / Mt 13:24-43 or Mt 13:24-30
A man and his wife pulled into a gas station. As their tank was being filled, the attendant washed their windshield. But when he finished, the driver said, “It’s still dirty. Wash it again.”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy, searching for any bugs he might have missed.
“It’s still dirty!” barked the driver when he was done. “Don’t you know how to wash a windshield?” So the poor kid went about it a third time, very, very carefully.
When he finished, the driver screamed: “It’s still dirty. You’re the lousiest windshield washer I’ve ever seen. Where’s your boss?” With that, the driver’s wife, leaned over, removed his glasses and cleaned them. And, miraculously, the windshield was spotless!
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How much of reality do we see? Probably only fragments! And why do we see so little of what’s there? Our own agenda and our expectations of what reality is or ought to be get in the way and blind us. And so we project our own motives and our own reality onto others. For example:
— I’m a greedy cut-throat, so I presume everybody else is too, and thus I live in a scary world … which I created in my own image.
— I never thought much of Uncle George, so I laughed at him when he offered me Microsoft at $2 a share. What could he know?
— I was a basketball star in high school, so my kids are all going to do the same, even though they’re all midgets.
— I like privacy, so I moved to the Gobi desert, never seeing that the isolation would drive my wife over the edge.
Projection and false expectations are master blinders, and so is fear. My life is too awful to look at, so I don’t look, and the abuse and misery go on. A new venture involves risks, so I get far too busy to look at it either.
Not seeing/not hearing impoverishes our lives and does serious damage as well. Nowhere is it more destructive than at the very center of our lives. The Spirit whispers to us constantly from within, but what do we hear? Just fragments. The Spirit speaks to us every day through the whole of creation, offering us reassurance that we’re not alone, comforting us, showing us where we’re needed. How much of that do we hear? Bits and pieces. No wonder so many of us feel alone, sad, unsure, and un-needed so often.
Solomon got it just right when God offered him anything he wanted: He asked for a listening heart. Somehow he understood that if only he could see and hear the Spirit within him and God’s good world around him, without his fears and his own expectations getting in the way, he’d know for sure who he was and where God was calling him. He’d know.
And so will we know — who we are and where we’re meant to be. We’ll know, if only we trust God enough to let our hearts listen and see … with all the filters down. Listen and see: God’s world is and our place in it are wonderful beyond all imagining, a thousand times better than the best of our illusions.
Listen and see! But remember, you have to clean your glasses first!
July 27th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I very recently watched a movie titled, “August Rush” which is about a young orphan who became a ward of the state by a mother who thought he had died at birth and a father who didn’t know he even existed. Connected through a mysterious and extraordinary love for and “sense of” music, they are eventually reunited in an extraordinary way simply because they were “listening with their hearts”. This movie left a beautiful and lasting image in my mind of what it means to be truly be silent so that we can hear the small, still voice of God and trust that He will bring it all to good. This movie was also a celebration of created life in the womb, although the main characters have to painfully suffer the consequences of a one-night-stand and a father’s lie.
We live in a hectic and frenzied world that jumps from one thing to the next in a nano-second or less, and we have stopped “listening with our hearts” because the clamor of the world is just too loud. And, as I sat down to do my readings for the day, my mind was hopping from one thing to the next and I had to really work hard to quiet it down and bring it under control, and while I was doing this I got a strong sense of the clamor and noise that goes on inside my own head all the time.
In today’s Old Testament reading, Solomon asks for an “understanding heart” and the Lord grants it to him in abundance. Part of having an understanding heart is simply listening totally and completely to the people you are dealing with and to what is going on around you. It is also about silencing the noise and confusion in your own self so that you “listen with your whole heart”.
When my three boys were little I would sometimes give them a piece of paper and a pencil and have them sit outside at the patio table. I would then ask them to close their eyes and just listen to the world all around them. Then I would have them identify and list as many sounds as possible on their papers. Their answers would often be very different and eye-opening as we realized just how selective our hearing really is. One might hear an airplane, while another might hear the drone of a bee, while still another might hear dogs barking in the far distance, and not once did they come up with identical lists.
As an adult, I attended a retreat on “Lectio Divina” or “Holy Reading” where we meditated on each individual word in a particuar Scripture. This was very beneficial to me because it made me realize that one word can hold a variety of meanings and definitions, which can lead to a deeper understanding of Holy Scripture. As a result, I enjoy taking the responsorial phrase from the Psalms and using the prayer practice of “Lectio Divina” to commit it to memory and heart. Today’s Psalm response is: “Lord, I love your commands.” And as I break it down into individual words then put it back together again … my soul leaps in response. “LORD, I LOVE YOUR COMMANDS!” Hallelujah! God bless!