Listening with the “Ear of Your Heart”
Volume 6

O Quam Mirabilis (For the Creator)

O how marvelous is the foreknowledge of the divine heart
which foreknew all creation.
For when God looked on the face of humanity,
whom God formed,
God saw all God’s works whole
in that same human form.
O how marvelous is the inspiration
that in this way roused humanity to life.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VWD9bsy2yg

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The Sacred Art of Listening
By Kay Lindahl
Published by
Skylight Paths Publishing

Reflection 6: 
Communion
Listening to Communicate

We “share information and exchange data at a rapid pace. There is hardly a moment to take a breath…We’ve become experts at imparting information, communicating from our heads. What’s missing is connection – communicating from our hearts.

Heart communication happens when we slow down, when we quiet down, look, and listen. Stop to take a breath. Become fully present with the person we’re with. Listen with all of our being. At this point, communication can occur without words. Being present is a gift that fills our hearts and spirits. We are in communion.

Imagine a world where we all communicate from our hearts every day. Heart communication could be as simple as a smile or giving undivided attention to another. What a gift!”

This is just a small portion of Kay Lindahl’s book. For more information:
The Sacred Art of Listening: Forty Reflections for Cultivating A Spiritual Practice
by Kay Lindahl
Published by Skylight Paths Publishing
Available for your use at the Antioch Center Library or for purchase at your local book store.

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A Small Message of Hope

© tamayura39 stock.adobe.com

“I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk. And among these people, if they are faithful to their own calling, to their own vocation, and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible.

And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.”

Thomas Merton
Trappist Monk

Reflection Questions

• These words of Thomas Merton, “The deepest level of communication is not communication but communion”, suggest a more intuitive, creative, immediate direct manner of relating to ourselves and others. From what we are learning from the Sacred Art of Listening and from your own personal experience, what state of heart/mind helps us to be more open to this communion?

• Merton talks about recovering an original unity, a sense of identity, a way of being, that is a deeper way of relating and connecting to others. From your experience, what are the barriers that get in the way of this more “real” way of being who we are?

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© DStroik Photography stock.adobe.com

“The Universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees—all these have voices and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.”

“At present…we are in a phase of transition that must be described as the groping phase. We are like a musician who faintly hears a melody deep within the mind, but not clearly enough to play it through. This is the inner agony we experience especially when we consider that the music we are creating is the very reality of the Universe.

It would be easier for us if we would remember that the earth itself, as the primary energy, is finding its way both to interior conscious expression in the human and to outer fulfilment in the universe.”

Thomas Berry, C.P.
“The Dream of the Earth”

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© mariusz szczygieł stock.adobe.com

“The best of our rituals and religious disciplines…help as remember our oneness….They release our unity. They free us from the forgetfulness of thinking we are essentially separate. They liberate us from delusions of isolated individuality. In the sacrament of communion in the Christian tradition…we recite Jesus’ words, “Do this to remember me.” We do this to…bring back into relationship again what has been forgotten, to reawaken within ourselves, the way of oneness, the life of oneness.”

John Phillip Newell
A New Harmony: The Spirit, The Earth and The Human Soul

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We are offering Reflections for Cultivating a Spiritual Practice using the book, “The Sacred Art of Listening” by Kay Lindahl.  These programs will continue to take place from 12:30 to 1:30 pm at the Antioch Center on the following dates:

August 22
September 5, 19

The programs will be facilitated by our Advisory Board member, Randy Thomas with help from Susan Batterton. We have purchased 2 copies of the book, “The Sacred Art of Listening”, and made them available for you to read at the Antioch Center. Handouts for each session will also be available along with additional supplemental resources.

For those unable to attend the programs, we will send out summaries, such as this one, of each program for your home study.

If you would like copies of the handouts from the series, email us at [email protected].