List of Reflections
1. Listening with the heart
2. Living with Freedom
3. Free at the Seventh attempt
4. Retreat - A journey
4. Retreat - A journey
LISTENING WITH THE HEART
M.C .Mathew
My present office is located facing a corridor which accesses the Central Sterile Supply store. There is deafening high noise level, when the luggage trollies loaded with the supplies are pushed along the corridor. For the first few days, I was annoyed by the noise level. Later, I was reminded of it only when visitors to my office reacted with covering their ears with their palms. Now, even if I am aware of it, it does not engage my attention after the first few seconds. I have now reset my hearing threshold to this sound. I hear it, but I can ignore it. This has something to do with my listening intent. I have conditioned myself over these weeks to give no attention to this as this sound is of no value or significance to me.
We live in a noisy world. The noises of diverse origin compete for our attention. Most of us have built in filters against noises which need no attention; we tune in to sounds and voices volitionally when we perceive that they carry a message for us.
I was meeting with a class mate after 25 years. I was in the midst of completing an assignment when he walked into my room. We spent about forty five minutes together reliving our in between years. I enquired about his family and his children. He turned to me and said, ‘this is the third time you are asking me the same question, Are you not listening to what I have said’!
We can listen at three levels. We hear and interpret it for our understanding. This is how we process to advance our information and knowledge base. We may store this information or ignore it after the initial engagement, depending on how much value we attribute to it. Often we will rush in to add our bit of information to what is being said. It ends up being a conversation rather than a listening occasion. Secondly we hear but the information does not interest us. For wanting to be polite or hospitable, we pretend to be listening, but we are be pre-occupied with our preferred thoughts or are in a distant scene inwardly. We convey disinterest through our gestures and body language. It soon becomes a monologue with no reciprocity of interest or affirmation. Thirdly, we feel while we listen. We are drawn towards the person and what is spoken, because we connect with the person and what is spoken. There is a resonance within us to what is being spoken. We are eager to listen rather than in a hurry to speak. We are not curiosity driven to ask questions or enquiry driven to gather more information. Instead we stay within the perimeter of what is spoken and move into the spirit and feeling of what is being spoken. There is intense participation through keen attention, silent pauses, and communication of nearness to the person emotionally. This is the beginning of a journey towards experience of listening with the heart.
We can listen with our hearts to others and ourselves. It is when we are used to listening to ourselves with our heart, we gradually develop the habit of being able to listen to others with our heart. The psalmist speaks of listening to himself. One can listen to oneself, by being in touch with our thought processes and inner happenings. Jesus was sitting stooped and writing on the ground, while listening to the woman and others, brought to Him by the Pharisees, accusing her of adultery (John.8:1-12). Jesus was silent and listening to himself before responding. Our inner conscious ambience is created to be like still water in a pond. When any thoughts or events or words reach the interior, its stillness is disturbed. The immediate response to what we hear can be superficial or impulsive. Instead, while staying centered in silence, the inner calm returns and our heart will give a resonance, which springs from our wisdom and discernment. This habit of self-listening is way of enlarging our inner consciousness and an awareness of the outer realities.
King Solomon displayed this dual reality of listening to himself and listening to two women who came to him quarrelling over the parentage of their children, one dead and the other alive. Having listened to both of them, he proposed that the living child be divided between themselves (1kings.3:16-28). That set in motion a series of confessions by both women which settled justly the parentage of the child. Listening with our heart leads us to comprehending truth that is hidden or lying in ambush. We can be path finder to others through such a listening habit.
Listening with the heart is a spiritual exercise. We listen to the words of course; but more than that, our whole being becomes a listener. When Samuel confessed, ‘Speak, for your servant hears’(1Sam.3:10), when the Lord called him a third time and stood before him, what he meant was, ‘I am all listening’. Listening with our whole being is participating fully in the experience of the other person solemnly and openly. When we gradually grow in this habit, we are not in a hurry to give our opinions; we are not planning our responses while listening; nor are we busy analyzing what we hear. Our attention is fully on what we hear and on the person who speaks.
It is such a practice which will enlarge our insight or intuition to give a seminal response like what Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman, in spite of her deliberate efforts to conceal information about herself (John. 3:16) ‘Go and call your husband and come here’. This led her to a personal faith in Jesus and later to be the good news bearer to the Samaritans of her city (v.39). Listening with our heart has the potential to transform a person. Such a way of listening is self-giving offer in loving response.
Listening with the heart has a dual impact. A middle aged man once came to late Dr, A.K.Tharien, seeking for some money to buy some ration for his family. He was smelling of alcohol. Dr. Tharien instead of giving him money, gave him enough ration for three days. This man moved by this gesture told Dr. Tharien the story of his life. The rain had failed for the fifth consecutive year and no cultivation was possible in his land. He was hard pressed for money even for his subsistence. He had accumulated debts and the money lenders were seeking after him. It was this distress which pushed him to drinking. Dr. Tharien visited him in his house the next day. Dr. Tharien with the help of his friends began, a ‘food for work’ programme, in which he engaged some men in the village to work daily to make a check dam so that when the rain came, they would be able to conserve the ground water level through water percolation. They were paid rice and cereals in turn as their wages. This man because of whose initiative this happened gave up his drinking habit because he found a listening friend. That was the first water harvesting programme in that region fifty years ago, which later became the sheet anchor of water recycling, leading to the villages of Oddanchatram recovering from chronic water shortage. Now, the second largest vegetable market in Tamil Nadu is at Oddanchatram, because this water conservation has turned the villages green.
Dr. Tharien was moved when he listened. He responded contemplatively. The man who came to him, was touched because Dr. Tharien listened to him and addressed his need. He did not need alcohol as an emotional cathartic any more.
Listening with the heart is a gift that we can offer to each other.
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LIVING WITH FREEDOM
M.C.Mathew
I feel attached to my lap top, cameras, voice recorder, car, etc. so much so, I am not comfortable to let them be borrowed. I convey some excuse or other to avoid lending them. I have often asked myself as to why I have such a disproportionate attachment to them. My rational mind fools me with an argument, that it is good to be careful with one’s belongings. I have recently discovered that, I live with an enslaving spirit of attachment to many things in my life. I am not free and I want to be on a journey to experience the joy of holding on to things lightly and loosely.
Mr. Andy Matheson, a partner of INTERSERVE, whom we knew well while he lived in India London
I came across a poem written by late Madelva Wolff, in which she suggested a ‘habitually relaxed grasp’ over what we have rather than a life without collection of things, gadgets or belongings. This poem introduces us to the idea of simplicity of life, which is ‘the ability to handle with single-minded unity of soul, what life brings than it is to refuse to accept anything except what we are willing to accept on our own terms, sparse and basic as these may be’. Joan Chittister, in her book, ‘In the heart of the temple’, suggests that, ‘A life is simple if it is honest, unencumbered, open to a consciousness beyond its own and serene in the midst of a mindless momentum that merges on the chaotic. Of all those things, however, honesty is surely its bedrock, its touchstone. We live a simple life when we do not pretend to be something we are not’.
I have been touched by the word ‘encumbered’ while meditating on the inner freedom, that I have been longing for. I have often been swayed by the thought, highlighted by the Christian ‘ashram’ life in India
My soul needs to cultivate a ‘sense of enoughness’. Let me open my heart to the richness and beauty of the present moment, whatever be its shape and content or whatever be its lack or limitation. There is a flight that our minds seduce us to take into the world of opportunities, possibilities and promises. We tend to aspire for the future, hopeful of reaching where we want to and achieving what we feel we are capable of. This drivenness to become and acquire is a controlling human instinct. When we cease to be consumed by the need for what we can do without and when we learn to be gentle even with what is lacking in ourselves, we shall find ourselves free to be where we are and stop mourning about where or what we are not.
This will lead to some agitations in our soul. We live among people who remind us of the glitter of the temporal things. They may reduce us to a level of being referred to, as not being ’good enough’ or ‘successful enough’ that our inner ambience can be in conflict between our choice and what others project to us. It is this which calls for a new way of ‘seeking God’. ‘Seek God and not where God lives or what God provides’ was the teaching of the desert fathers in the fourth century. This calls for viewing the world with the eye of God and respond to it with compassionate heart, knowing that, ‘ where your treasure is, there your heart will also be’(Mat.6:21). This God-centric orientation will help us to live, unceasingly, intensely and consciously with freedom in our spirit. Isn’t it another level of inner freedom, when ‘things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace...’! It is when this happens, we can walk through the world with hands and hearts unencumbered.
I have been often drawn by the ‘closed hands’ of a new born. Except when the baby is feeding at the mother’s breast, the hands remain closed till the age of six months of age. To me it is a symbol of baby feeling sufficient with what is given. Baby needs no more than what the mother offers because of which the hands remain closed to the world around. It is a closure against everything which the baby does not need. When the baby is ready to crawl, pick up objects, exchange objects between hands, which is about six months of age, the palms remain open. Till that time, a baby is given and provided for. When the instinct of growth and development ‘push’ the baby to explore, handle, receive object with hands, the hands voluntarily open and close. From then on, a baby will so close the hands that it is tight and unreleasable, especially if the baby is holding on to something. A four year old child, was playing with marble in a jar. He put his hand and picked up a handful of marbles to bring them out. With the closed fists, he could not bring out his hand through the narrow neck of the jar. His parents and three of us watching him suggested that he dropped the marbles in the jar and tried picking up one by one. In spite of our repeated suggestions, he did not oblige, instead he started crying inconsolably with his hand stuck in the neck of the jar. This is the instinct of possessiveness. There is fear of loss, if he were to release his hands. This possessive instinct will not tolerate even a momentary loss.
I come to face to face with my own inner orientation and attitude. Do I receive to possess or to share! The widow whose offering of two mites, Jesus noticed has something fresh to convey to my searching soul(Mark.13:41-44). ‘She out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood’. Her abundance or poverty did not determine how she lived with her belongings. She offered herself to God and not just what she possessed. In giving all that she had, she enthroned the sovereign God in her life. How I live with what I possess reveals my worldview of God.
Living with freedom originates from God. ‘If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed’ (John.8:36). We are destined to be free and live in the fullness of freedom. What characterises an authentic exercise of freedom is, when we can learn to live uninfluenced by the seductiveness of the unnecessary and the cosmetic, but with purity of heart, engage in single minded search for the essence of life. When human heart is bathed in grace, the sensual frills of the world recede to the periphery. That is, Living with freedom.
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FREE AT THE SEVENTH ATTEMPT
M.C. Mathew
A dragon fly found its way into my office room by accident through the open door, when the monsoon wind was blowing fiercely in the corridor. After hovering over my table for a while, it tried escaping through the grilled open window, but was thrust back and fell on the ledge of the window. The lower portion of the window has a fixed glazed glass, and the upper portion has grills on the window and is open to outside. The dragon fly would climb the two feet high glass, but would suddenly slide down just before reaching the open grilled window. It would climb fast vertically in the initial phase, over the smooth glass but would lose the momentum half way through and yield to the gravitational pull while nearing the open window. After two attempts it changed its approach. It would climb slowly right from the bottom, then too, it could not move up beyond the three fourth of the height. It then rested on the ledge for a while and moved up vertically initially and changed to climbing sideways. On the sixth attempt the dragon fly did reach the grilled window but just before it could fly out, it slipped and reached the bottom. On the seventh attempt, the dragon fly did all the climbing movements sideways, slowly and steadily, resting in between and reached the window easily. It rested a while before flying out. I noticed it resting for a while in the adjacent parapet, before commencing its flight.
I have had rough three weeks with several events crowding and disturbing me. I felt burdened and pre-occupied. Every effort I made to pull myself up had only minimal release. There are times, when our intention or efforts do not bring the desired benefit. There is a cloud hanging over the mind’s filter, that clarity or direction does not emerge. These times are the in- between times, when we are in transition, in thoughts or experiences. There is a cross road ahead and one is overcome with inertia to negotiate it. Such times are trying and exhausting times, because human soul needs peace in its ambience and hope as its sheet anchor. However one may attempt to reset one’s mind with positive thoughts, but the inner realities of pain or distress consume them. No wonder many end up being moody or detached because they feel trapped in a world, which was not often their creation.
The dragon fly brought a message that blessed my soul with a new optic. It was most alert to the environmental realities. It felt trapped in a closed space. Its intention was clear- to get out of this entrapment. The dragon fly changed its approach three times. First, it was the aggressive effort to fly out or climb over the glass, but with no success. There was much effort but no progress. Later it was a practical approach of changing the method of climbing, modulated by its enduring skill which was still not enough. Thirdly it was a rhythmic approach of movement and rest. That released the dragon fly, into its world freedom where it actually belonged. It took a while before the dragon fly could arrive at its freedom.
Every dragon fly is used to its skills of flying, dodging the predator, and soaring high in the open sky. But it too will find this not good enough sometimes. It has to use a different approach to secure its freedom. A momentary period of rest in between its flights is its habit. This time, it could escape only when it surrendered its habit of flying and resorted to a gentle slow movement, much against its natural instinct or learned behaviour. In surrendering its natural ways, the dragon fly found its freedom.
I too feel crippled by my efforts to feel well and live restfully. I have exhausted most of my familiar ways to recover the inner ambience of peace and self giving energy. No wonder anxiety grips my soul as it has no source to turn to. This is a moment of new insight- freedom comes through surrendering. There is new way to be learned. That cannot be found, till the old learned ways are set to rest. The existing anti-virus programme in a computer needs to be deleted, before the computer can accept a new anti-virus programme. The old needs to come to naught, for the new to have its sway, in human soul. Once both feet are caught in clayish mud in a marshy place, it is not by struggling to pull them out, one can release the feet, but by being still, till someone else can bring help to release the feet off the clayish mud.
What is this new way, the dragon fly came to announce to me! Move gently through the travails of life, step by step, with in between times of reflection. The freedom must begin now which will then will extent into the future. While moving forward to find fullness of freedom, one can let it proceed by experiencing traces of freedom right away. What cannot be experienced now in some measure cannot be experienced any better on a later occasion, because, experience naturally needs inner space for its expanding expression. It is like a seed which needs moist soil for it to sprout and grow.
Let me confess that my current ways of seeking for freedom do me little good. There is a new or different way which my soul longs for. My soul longs for freedom through surrender, so that I am not a prisoner of my expectations of love, recognition or endearment. Let me be freed from these corrupt longings of my soul, because, it is its weight which drags me down and makes me a nonstarter to move into freedom.
‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit’ (Luke.23:46) the statement of Jesus in his hours of agony at the cross, is a verse which has frequently drawn my attention during the last three weeks. I seem to capture its message cerebrally every time I was reminded of it. It was the dragon fly, which brought an emotional engagement with the burden of ‘holding on’ and the freedom through ‘letting go’.
Rabindranath Tagore captured this experience well, about 100 years back in one of his poems in Gitlanjali.
‘In the night of my weariness let me give myself up to sleep
without struggle, resting my trust upon thee.
Let me not force my flagging spirit
Into a poor preparation for thy worship.
It is thou who drawest the veil of
Night upon the tired eyes of the day
To renew its sight in a fresher
Gladness of awakening’
The dragon fly was a God-sent messenger to my soul this morning.
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RETREAT -JOURNEYINWARD & OUTWARD
M.C. Mathew ( 6th March,2001)
We are all on a journey of learning and growing. We exist in time but are beings beyond time. Our life is in formation, and daily living experiences contribute to our formation. The history of our origin, direction and destiny are etched in eternity. We are more than our human existence; more than our profession; more than our achievements. We are created beings formed in the image (likeness) of God by God and for God.
Each of us has an individual story of personal spirituality. Spirituality is largely an inner orientation towards the realities that are eternal and temporal - God and world. At the core of our life exists insights about God and this world which we actively express and profess. Who we are outside, is a reflection of who we are on the inside. Our ‘doing’ springs from our ‘being’. We pay attention to our physical health by eating well and doing exercises. We foster our emotional health through activities of leisure and relaxation. We nourish our spiritual health and inner well being by returning to God in silence and in prayer.
However it is not always easy to become silent to meet with God. Thee noise of the outer world mists and clouds the inner being and this limits our God-experience. We do pray regularly but do not find rest; we read the Scripture but do not find inspiration; we serve God but do not find fulfillment. Taking a time of retreat is making a dedicated occassion to get in touch with the realities, the contradictions, the questions, the anxieties of our inner world. The impact of outer events and inner struggles (for identity, meaning, esteem, direction and peace) create turbulence in the inner world. A time of retreat is a way of creating space in our busy lives for REST, REFLECTION and RENEWAL.
REST is more than sleep or recuperation of physical energy. The inner world may be noisy even when we are physically resting – agitating thoughts when we are awake and disturbing dreams when we sleep! These thoughts are so loud within us that they interrupt our preparation for silence. It is when we do not pay attention to our thoughts, that they come back to us with greater force and persistence, disrupting our thought process and unsettling us.
Rest is ‘hesychia’ – inner silence, vigilance and attention. During a retreat we need to find time to hear ourselves, and listen to these ‘calling attention notices’ from our inner self. As we welcome our thoughts and pay attention without suppressing or avoiding them, it is possible to set them aside and we begin to find freedom from being distrated by them when we prepare to be silent. One way to facilitate this disengagement from our thoughts is by writing them down as and when they occur over a period of 20 minutes. It is like taking an inventory of our thought world. We can prepare ourselves to have a deepening experience of inner silence by emptying our inner ‘recyle bin’. We can then become ‘silent’ and we can enter into the presence of God without distraction. Becoming silent is a prerequisite to ‘resting in God’ who is waiting to restore, refresh and renew us.
REFLECTION is a process of meditating, dwelling on or staying with particular issues that surface when we quieten ourselves in the presence of god. We receive an inventory of thoughts during the time of listening to our inner world. These thoughts are the markers or sensors of our emotions, needs, fears, disappointments, aspirations, etc. We discover what is going on in our sub-conscious world during this exercise. We become aware of the direction we have followed for our daily living, the choices we have made, the prejudices we carry, the judgements we make and hold on to, the biases that cloud our thought, the moments of fulfillment we have had, the times when we have received grace, the opportunities we have had for growth, etc. During a period of reflection we move from a superficial realm where we follow preferred patterns and ways guided by our biases, prejudices and emotions to a deeper plane of consciousness about our uniqueness and individuality before God. This exercise may bring surprises and make us aware of new realities about ourselves, others and God. We also become aware of the diverse ways God uses of caring for our personal formation. Reflection is a time of meeting with ourselves and waiting to meet with God. In this process we move away from being centred in ourselves to the Centre of our lives-God. As we are freed from the superficial emotions, fears, desires and biases that govern our behaviour, we are able to return to God ‘just as we are. These times of personal reflection deepen our desire and longing for God. In this space we are able to see that God loves us and so we can learn to be at peace with ourselves. Times of quietness facilitate reflection on who we are and we are able to befriend ourselves.
RENEWAL is an experience of God’s visitation in our lives. It is when we are thirsty we feel quenched most with water. It is when we are aware of our need for God, that we feel most satisfied by His visitation. Renewal is God’s gift to those who wait for Him. The virgins who had the oil in their lamps were able to welcome the bridegroom when he arrived (Matt.25:1-13). Rest and reflection would be the oil we need during a retreat to wait for God’s visitation.
God visits us in unexpected ways. Elijah sensed God not in the wind, or the earthquake or in the fire, but in the sound of the blowing of a gentle wind (1Kings19:9-12). What we receive during a renewal experience is a heightened consciousness of the ‘realities beyond’ (1Cor 2:9) A flower may suddenly appear brilliant calling our attention with a message . The singing of the bird may ring an inner melody in our soul and revive our inner being. A verse from the Bible may reveal a truth that meets our current need. A conversation or a talk may bring a revelation which resonates in our heart with profound meaning. A song touches us deeply that we are moved to worship in awe and wonder.
This inward movement results in a changed optic or orientation. Prayer becomes an inward reality. The world around us comes alive with greater meaning and clarity. We begin to see those who are poor with greater compassion. We find it easier to relate to people who were difficult earlier. We grow in graciousness, thoughtfulness and helpfulness. We experience nearness of God and closeness to others. God gifts us with many fruits of His visitation. We may not be able to fathom God’s visitation (Psalm.8:3-4.), but His visitation leaves a mark in our lives in the form of the fruits we are enabled to bear (Gal.5:22). We are also able to see life from a God-given perspective and make choices that have eternal value and significance. The experience of renewal enables us to choose life and minister grace.
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