Reflection
While we can’t listen without hearing, we can hear without listening. The difference is paying attention. Listening is the art of connecting with another person so you fully understand what they are saying and feeling. Listening says you are important to me. I care what you are trying to communicate. Listening can tell the difference between the superficial and the real. Listening attunes us to the multitude of sounds that nature creates every day. Listening opens us to connection with the world around us so that we really absorb the sounds of life.
Prayer
Give me, Lord a listening heart.
1 Kings 3:5-15
Action
Make the effort to really listen to others. Listen to the world around you. Enjoy the sounds of life.
Suggested Reading
So give your servant a listening heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong.
1 Kings 3:9
Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.
Mark 4:9
Listening is much more than simply hearing. Hearing is about receiving information, while listening is about communication, and calls for closeness. Listening allows us to get things right, and not simply to be passive onlookers, users or consumers. Listening also means being able to share questions and doubts, to journey side by side, to banish all claims to absolute power and to put our abilities and gifts at the service of the common good.
Pope Francis
One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.
Bryant H. McGill
There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak.
Simon Sinek
Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it.
David Hockney
There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
G.K. Chesterton
The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.
Ralph G. Nichols
Friends are those rare people who ask how we are, and then wait to hear the answer.
Ed Cunningham
Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals. (attr to J. Isham)
Sura Hart
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
George Washington Carver
There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough to pay attention to the story.
Linda Hogan