Soften Your Heart

 

We can harden our hearts in two ways: first, by not being moved seeing the suffering of our brothers and sisters, and second, by not allowing others and God to soothe and heal us when we suffer.

 

The story of a leper narrated by Mark (1. 40-45), is an example of the second type of hardening of the heart. A leper approached Jesus and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.” The leper asked for healing, but did he really think that Jesus would be interested in him? 

 

Understand the leper’s encounter, we need to understand the situation of lepers in the first century. Lepers were chased out of colonies and prohibited from entering public places including places of worship. They dreaded the gradual decay of their body. Perhaps, the more excruciating agony was their experience of emotional and spiritual alienation. Their townspeople, including family, rejected them. They could not go to places of worship and pour out their sorrows to God. They felt rejected, worthless, and abandoned by all. 

 

Looking through that cultural lens, we can see the inner psyche of the leper who asked for healing from Jesus. Being rejected continuously by people, he developed a self-image that he was worthless and that no one really would care about him. Though he had heard about the compassion and healing power of Jesus, he almost expected to be rejected by Jesus. It was as if he said, “If you feel like it, you can heal me, otherwise, no worry, I’m okay to be rejected and will go on my way; I don’t necessarily deserve healing.” The answer of Jesus was very emphatic, he said, “I do wish that you be clean.”

 

Continuous frustrations, rejections, and suffering can harden our hearts and shut us off from any genuine soothing and healing that can flow to us from God and from our brothers and sisters. Experiences of rejection, betrayal, separation, and pain can make us bitter and pessimistic toward relationships. 

 

Such experiences of suffering and disconnect can harden our hearts to the love and joy available to us. We can choose to suffer alone, hesitant to ask for help and support. Sadly, we can altogether shut ourselves to the priceless gift of relationships. Gradually, we can alienate ourselves not only from our fellow beings but also from God. We can choose to live a life of misery and disconnect. 

 

All people may not care about us, but some people do care about us. God cares about us. Can we soften our hearts and allow God and others to apply the balm of acceptance, love, and healing, particularly when we hurt?

 

Listening is Understanding

When you speak, you regurgitate what you already know, but when you listen, you learn and understand. Understanding the other person helps you to have empathy for the other person and connect with him or her at a deeper level. No understanding and deep relationship can be built without good listening. Listening is a gift as well as a skill. Listening can be enhanced by the following practices. 

Avoid formulating your response

           Listening invites you to drop all preoccupations and biases and pay full attention to the person speaking. Often, there is a danger in communication that you start thinking about what you are going to say when the person speaking stops. Listening requires that you are not busy formulating your response.[1] If you are busy formulating your response then you can lose the message or receive it only partially. When you do not truly know what the other person tried to convey how can you constructively respond? Missing the message, or receiving a partial message can lead to chaos, misunderstanding, conflict, and hurt. Therefore, when you listen, listen with your whole heart and mind. Once the person has spoken, you can respond. 

Avoid judging

           The spirit of listening requires that you avoid judging the other person for what they say and how they say it.[2] It is possible that you may not agree with what they say or like the words and tone of voice used. If you disagree with what the other person says, you do not have to react on the spot. If you react then you are likely to miss the message and the communication may end in conflict. 

You must listen to the message of the other person and how he or she feels, despite you having a difference of opinion. Often, people can use words and tones that are not conducive for effective communication, nevertheless, that does not mean that there is no message in their communication. On your part, you can be calm, listen to the other person, and respond when appropriate. 

           Acceptance of the other does not mean that you agree with the content of the other. It means that you acknowledge the experience and feelings of the other. You can empathize with them, understanding their experience and feelings. Listening leads to understanding and understanding resolves problems and builds healthy relationships. 

 

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[1] Norman Wright, Communication: Key to Your Marriage – The Secret to True Happiness, Ventura CA: Regal, 1995.

[2] Norman Wright, Communication: Key to Your Marriage – The Secret to True Happiness, Ventura CA: Regal, 1995.

Listening is Caring

Communication is an integral part of any relationship. The soul of healthy communication is ‘listening’. Listening is a priceless gift that you can offer others. Where there is deep listening, relationships flourish while a lack of listening hollows out the best relationships. Listening is a beautiful way to care for others. The practice of listening is unlikely to be fruitless, particularly in close and intimate relationships. 

What is listening? Listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing involves gaining information, often for your own purposes. When you hear but do not listen, you focus on yourself and what is going on inside you. Norman Wright, a prominent counselor of family, child, and trauma in America, says, “Listening involves caring for and being empathic toward the person who is talking… Listening means that you are trying to understand the feelings of the other person and are listening for his or her sake”.[1]

Listening, contrary to hearing, is other-centered and focuses on what is happening inside the other person with the intention of understanding and caring for them. Listening enables one to understand the feelings of the other person, even those that are not expressed in words. 

Hearing can happen due to obligation, fear, societal pressures, or pleasing others. On the other hand, listening emerges spontaneously in a deep sense of love and is geared toward caring for the other as best one can. Listening nourishes the roots of a relationship and strengthens the bond between persons.  

Next time you communicate with a dear one notice whether you are hearing or listening.

 

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[1] Norman Wright, Communication: Key to Your Marriage – The Secret to True Happiness, Ventura CA: Regal, 1995. 

Embracing “Sister Death”

What is death? Different individuals and cultures understand death differently. Some try to escape in terror while others wrestle with finding a death cure. However, death is neither a monster to run away from nor a disease to be cured — rather, death is an intimate companion helping us to further our journey to God.

Often, we think of death as something at the end of the road, far away, and not something relevant to us now. However, death is very close to us. It is within us, and we carry it in our being. We cannot run away from death — death is sure. One day, inevitably, our human bodies will succumb to death. Many people attempt to deny this reality and look upon death as the ultimate evil. 

Saint Francis chose another way by em­bracing death as one so close to him as to be called “Sister.”[1] Death is not the ultimate evil but rather the ultimate companion, who will help us transition from mortal to immortal life. Throughout the centuries, saints, mystics, and wise men and women like Francis have had an embracing attitude toward death. They became so comfortable and at ease with death that it did not scare them but offered them sublime hope. 

Richard Rohr satirically asks, what did one ever lose by dying?[2] Each of us needs to learn to let go of our earthly life so that we can begin to live a bigger life in God. The process of letting go of our attachment to needlessly prolong our earthly life must begin now. Francis invites us to embrace rather than to battle Sister Death, to love rather than to despise Sister Death, to welcome rather than to shun Sister Death. Saint Francis’ invitation not to live in fear of death or with hatred toward death opens our life to the joy of eternal life, even while we still live our earthly life.[3]

 Let us make friends with Death so that we do not get scared when she shows up. Some­day, Sister Death will greet us, and we will go home to our God who created us,[4] and Who continues to love us and invites us to share in the Divine life. 

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[1] Abbey Caskets, Francis of Assisi Embracing “Sister Death” With Hope

[2] Richard Rohr, Death Transformed

[3] Abbey Caskets, Francis of Assisi Embracing “Sister Death” With Hope

[4] Abbey Caskets, Francis of Assisi Embracing “Sister Death” With Hope

Death is a door

Haruki Murakami, a contemporary Japanese writer, says, “Death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of life.”[1] Often, we get scared of death because we imagine death as a dead end or a place of arrest, decay, and oblivion. On the contrary, death is the door to meeting our loving God. Death is freedom from all ills and limitations and is a new beginning of living in a much more glorious and joyful way. Death is the necessary tunnel on the road of life that leads one to God.

The mystic, Richard Rohr, says, “Death and life are two sides of the same coin; you cannot have one without the other. Each time you surrender, each time you trust the dying, your faith is led to a deeper level and you discover a Larger Self underneath”.[2] We like to live pretending that there is no death. Birth and death are two inseparable gates of life — one leads to earthly life and the other to divine life. You cannot have life without death, and you cannot have death without it leading you to life. Once you accept death, you can see through it, and eventually, you can start moving into the Divine life.

Death is a door and not a wall. Death is freedom and not confinement. This is the reason many mystics, saints, martyrs, and persons of wisdom walked happily and courageously toward death. Jesus very powerfully used the imagery of a grain of wheat for dying and rising — “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn. 12:24). Death is an inevitable truth and each person needs to embrace it. The earlier you befriend death, the fuller and more meaningful will your life be. 

Can you think of one more way in which death can be a blessing to you?

John Baptist OFM Cap.

Therapist

Belmont Behavioral Health System

Philadelphia, USA

 

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[1] Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood, New York: Vintage Books, p. 273.

[2] Richard Rohr, Death Transformed

Death gives beauty and value to life

Life is a gift, offered freely by God. It is a human tendency to take for granted the gift of life and all the blessings enshrined in it, particularly if one has not worked to receive them. Often, we forget that the gifts we now have are with us for a specific time and purpose. We might take life and the people we know for granted. It is death that reminds us that the people we love will not be here with us forever. 

Richard Rohr says, “we only know what life is when we know what death is”.1 Therefore, it is in knowing and accepting the reality of death that we see the value and beauty inherent in our life and in the lives of people we are connected with. It is a poignant truth that the people we love will separate from us; who goes first, is not ours to know. So, as long as we live, we can honour our relationships and care for them. 

It is through the eyes of death that we can discover what is true, genuine, and worthwhile in life. Death reminds us that life on earth is short, nevertheless, priceless. Artificial flowers, however nice and lasting, can never top the beauty and value of natural flowers, which are transient.  We are here on this earth for a short while like ephemeral flowers and we need to recognise the beauty and value intrinsic in human life and relationship. 

We need to celebrate life, however fleeting. In fact, it is the finitude of life on earth that makes it priceless. We can never purchase our life, or even add an extra second to it. It is a pure gift given by God. Each day is innately priceless and valuable. 

Without keeping death within view, we can lose sight of the value of life. In fact, Saint Francis of Assisi embraced “Sister Death”. Death invites us to live each of our days with utmost reverence and joy. 

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[1] Richard Rohr, Death Transformed

Death is a Blessing

For many, death is, quite literally, the deadliest thing in life. Some restlessly attempt to evade death with intense angst and most are scared even to think of it. There is new life and resurrection, but not without passing through death. Jesus assured us of the resurrection but showed us that new life is possible only by embracing death. Death is intentionally designed by God into the very existence of human life. Death is not a useless and meaningless part of human life. Death can be the final and most meaning-making journey of human existence. Death, understood rightly, can prove to be a blessing for us. One blessing of death is that it overcomes even the most stubborn of all evils. 

Death is Stronger than Evil — Sadly, we have a largenumber of examples of individuals and even groups that were horrendously evil or were perhaps the incarnation of evil. The one thing that is consoling about death is that every person dies, good as well as evil. One can imagine the condition of this world if people like Adolf Hitler did not die. Often, our world suffers due to people who are extremely evil and take pleasure in devastating the lives of many, even of millions. People who think they are masters of death, God tells them, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you” (Lk. 12:20). Death comes and takes them into oblivion when they are still plotting genocides. Death becomes a blessing in such situations and reminds us that everything will decay including evil, no matter how strong and victorious evil seems. A life lived with the awareness of death and with the realization that one day we must encounter God face-to-face helps us to shun evil and engage in good.