It’s a common form of greeting these days:
“Hi, how are you?”
“I’m good. How are you?”
Often asked in passing, often said without eye contact, this human exchange has become a token gesture more about polite society than sincere inquiry.
But both of these statements ask a question, and yet, we rarely stop for the answer, never mind take time to listen.
In sitting with the practice and soul work of listening—our theme for this month—I can’t help but wonder:
What does it actually mean to ask someone how they are—to care, to pause, to ask and allow for one’s life to be interrupted in order to hold space for what might follow.
More so, what does it actually mean to listen for someone’s unbeknownst response?
Research talks a lot lately about the decline of human interaction due to the rise of our smartphones (staring down at our phones, ordering online, asking Siri instead of a person), so I find myself considering the power we hold in what has become the missed opportunity of a greeting.
How.are.you?
These three simple words carry enormous possibility to change the trajectory of someone’s day—yours included.
Further still, when was the last time you greeted yourself sincerely?
When was the last time you asked yourself how you are, and then listened, intently, as your soul used your thoughts, body, and heart to communicate to you?
Perhaps our society finds it hard to greet others because we haven’t created space to greet ourselves.
And perhaps it’s so very hard to listen to others, because we haven’t spent time exercising and practicing the soul work of listening to our own lives.
As you take time to sit with the prompts in today’s intermission, consider how you are.
And when you’ve sincerely greeted your own heart and listened for what your life has to say, turn that connection around and greet someone else with that very same posture of receptivity and sincerity.
-With Joy
Spiritual Director
Co-Founder & Content Director
cindy@joyover.com
Pause for Examination
How are you? No, really. How are you?
Listen deeply.
Listen for what percolates in your mind, what stirs in your heart, and what nudges you in your body.
Hear the wisdom of that still, small voice of soul connecting collective meaning and insight to this wholistic way of listening.
Pause for Practice
“God of silence and God of all sound, help me to listen.
Help me to do the deep listening to the sounds of my soul, waiting to hear Your soft voice calling me deeper into You.
Give me attentive ears that begin to separate the noise from the sounds that are You—
You who have been speaking to me and through me my whole life, for so long that You can seem like background noise.
Today, help me hear You anew.”
Amen.
Pause for Thought
“The most difficult and decisive part of prayer is acquiring this ability to listen. Listening is no passive affair … Inactivity and superficial silence do not necessarily mean that we are in a position to listen. Listening is a conscious, willed action, requiring alertness and vigilance, by which our whole attention is focused and controlled. Listening is in this sense a difficult thing. And it is decisive because it is the beginning of our entry into a personal and unique relationship with God, in which we hear the call of our own special responsibilities for which God has intended us. Listening is the aspect of silence in which we receive the commission of God.”
- [1] A Prayer for Deep Listening, Author Unknown, Jesuit Resource (.org).
- [2] Mother Mary Clare SLG, Encountering the Depths (Darton, Longman & Todd 1981), p.33
- The story behind this month’s theme — the soul work of listening by Dustin Heigh.
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- Click here for previous month’s art offerings
P.S. Take cue from this cool cat. Now this guy knows how to listen to life 😹.
