Listening

I hope everyone is enjoying their Summer, I've enjoyed reading everyone's posts and experiences...

The following is a passage we read in Bible study from a book called The Religious Sense by Luigi Giussani

Let us say that Mark and I are walking along the city streets. Because Mark has raised a serious problem I am knocking myself out trying to explain things to him. He listens to me and I grow ever more impassioned and ever more lucid- or so it seems to me as I present my arguments. "So then, do you understand?" "Yes, yes up to this point I follow you." We have been walking along talking with our eyes fixed on the side walk. But he lifts his eyes to notice a pretty woman walking on the other side of the street. He continues to say "yes, yes", but in an increasingly mechanical manner as he fixes his eyes on the lovely figure and turns his head to watch her as she moves away. This continues until she disappears into the distance. Discontentedly he withdraws his gaze and turns back to me in the very instant I have concluded my argument. I say to him, "So then, Mark do you agree?" And he says "No, no I am not persuaded!"

This reply is not valid because he did not pay attention to my arguments. This is the offense that the majority of people commit when they face the problems of destiny, faith, religion, the Church and Christianity because, being "anxious and troubled with many other things", in these things their minds are "dead and buried". But then they claim to be able to pronounce a judgment, to have an opinion, partly because it is impossible not to have a viewpoint on these matters.

At first it seems this passage only correlates with people who disagree with the teachings of the Church but the more I think about it the more I feel this is something a lot of us do with our faith. I think it's easy to recognize if it's just an everyday conversation but if you imagine this to be a conversation with God it becomes more interesting. It's easy to think that we pay attention to what God is telling us without getting distracted. I think it's worth taking a moment to stop and think about whether we are really listening to what God is trying to tell us or if we are just saying, "yes, yes I get it", and then moving on to the next daily task. I realized lately that God is totally invested in talking to us and in explaining serious problems to us but we don't always hear him because of the abundant amount of distraction in our everyday lives. The best way I can suggest is just what Daniel has suggested, take ten minutes, at least, to just sit and pray in a quiet place and if you get distracted in prayer, here's a suggestion I found to help while praying.

"Imagine the consciousness during prayer to be like a section of a river. Thoughts and distractions are like little boats that come floating downstream. If we don't pay them any attention, they float by and are gone. If we put our attention into them, or worse, weigh them down with an emotional reaction, the little boat gets heavier and moves that much slower. The more attention and emotion we put into the little boat, the heavier it gets and the more sluggish it becomes in floating away."