Friday, October 16, 2020
The noise you hear in an emergency room is much like the noise in a deaf household: the sound of machines, metal against metal, even sometimes a clanging pot. But in another way, it’s not the same. You hear the whirr of a machine measuring someone’s heart rate, but the deaf do not hear it. You listen for the telltale sounds of the difficulty of Covid breathing, but the deaf can only feel the strain, the stress.
How do we listen to someone who is afraid of dying? It’s the time to listen rather than offer false piety which gives comfort to neither the speaker nor the hearer. Why do we tell a person that everything is going to be all right when we know it isn’t? Perhaps because we hope it will be for us.
Listening. It’s so important to listen to others. Listening means more than hearing the words; it means opening our hearts to the soft cry, the mumbled word, the halting speech of fear especially when we know everything is not going to be all right.
Prayer for the Day
Dwelling in the dark of the night of our souls,
We come to you, O Lord, for respite and rest;
Searching for the peace that only you can give,
We approach you with awe and trembling;
Save us from the temptation to search for certainty
And restore in us a faith that opens our minds and hearts;
As given us by the One we follow,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we should say.
Zeno of Citium, Hellenistic philosopher (c. 334–262 BCE)
We have to hear on every level at once if we are really to become whole. The problem is that most of us are deaf in at least one ear.
Joan Chittester, OBM, American religious writer
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
“Come,” my heart says, “seek God’s face!”
Your face, O Lord, do I seek.
Psalm 27:7–8