I have been asked by my church to give a talk on Listening as Prayer on Feb. 2. The invitation actually came both to me and my wife, Lynn, who is a world-champion listener. But since she is otherwise occupied that day, I have to go it alone.
As I have planned the talk, I have looked at what I have written about prayer and silence and find that some of it relates, especially the idea of being fully in the present moment. Everything we do, for the most part, can be a form of prayer if the intention is to enter fully into the task, being mindful of the present reality and not of our plans and worries.
This is especially true of listening to another person. To give up our own preoccupations for a while and give ourselves over fully to hearing what another has to say is a form of love. And it is certainly a form of prayer.
Listening is not something that most of us do well. I have learned over the years to put good attention on my students and friends, but I know that I am also aware of the need to say something helpful when they stop talking, and so part of me is anticipating the expected response instead of being fully open to what the other person has to say and trusting that I will know how to respond.
So many people I meet make speeches rather than conversation, pouring out all their issues and leaving no time for me. I see that they are wound up and anxious and don't have the gift of patience. They remind me of the talking heads on TV who have rehearsed their talking points; what they need are listening points. Their button is on "send," not on "receive." I pray that they will slow down the rush of their thoughts long enough to take in what someone else says. How else can a real conversation occur?
Lynn reminds me that we listen best to those we know. When we take the time to know who someone is, we listen better. This applies to people as well as to God. How seldom we think of prayer as anything more than asking for favors, with the focus on ourselves. We need, rather, to be quiet and listen to the "still small voice of God" that Elijah heard in the Bible. To do so, we have to empty ourselves of ourselves.
As Meister Eckhart wrote, "The most sublime achievement of this life is to remain still and let God speak and act in you."
God often speaks to us in his own language, which is silence. This is what contemplative prayer is all about: listening to God. Often this takes the form of our listening to one of our fellow creatures. To put ourselves aside and give ourselves to this task is a great spiritual challenge.
As I reflect more on this topic, I hope I will become more understanding of those I meet who have no idea of what real listening is all about. I know that my listening to them does a lot of good to them in their distress, and that perhaps is all I can hope for.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Fear, Trust and Evil
As I return after a longer-than-expected hiatus, I am thinking about my newly revised course, The Faces of Evil, at Rollins College. This was one of my most popular courses at UCF when I taught there in the English Department and continues to be one of my own favorites since it stimulates important questions and raises issues of the greatest consequence about human behavior.
One way to approach the vast topic of evil is to look at hate--and the way fear so often leads to anger, which leads to hatred and even violence. There are many reasons why people hate and even enjoy hating; it seems almost good sometimes to feel hatred toward one who has wronged you. This is a topic I enjoy exploring in "Othello" and other works. It is one way to make the mystery of human evil at least somewhat understandable and to see how the potential for "evil," however that is defined, is present in each of us.
When I think of fear itself, apart from hatred, I notice how many people I meet are full of fear. The whole world is governed by fear. We fear each other and even ourselves. Young children worry about the future, about failure, just as teenagers and adults do. Parents worry constantly, it seems. This means they spend too much time imagining a future that always seems more horrible than the reality of the present as it unfolds, day by day.
It is hard for me to have a real conversation with many people because they are too tense to listen. This will be the subject of another piece on this blog. How rare it is to meet someone who is genuinely centered and calm and open to hearing what I have to say. Most people seem, rather, preoccupied with themselves or rather with their fears and worries. It is useless for me to say to them, "Trust" because I know how quickly my own fears trigger anxiety over seemingly inconsequential things. All I can do is turn such feelings over to God and pray, as in Psalm 27: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?" It also helps to breathe deeply and move in a new direction.
One way to approach the vast topic of evil is to look at hate--and the way fear so often leads to anger, which leads to hatred and even violence. There are many reasons why people hate and even enjoy hating; it seems almost good sometimes to feel hatred toward one who has wronged you. This is a topic I enjoy exploring in "Othello" and other works. It is one way to make the mystery of human evil at least somewhat understandable and to see how the potential for "evil," however that is defined, is present in each of us.
When I think of fear itself, apart from hatred, I notice how many people I meet are full of fear. The whole world is governed by fear. We fear each other and even ourselves. Young children worry about the future, about failure, just as teenagers and adults do. Parents worry constantly, it seems. This means they spend too much time imagining a future that always seems more horrible than the reality of the present as it unfolds, day by day.
It is hard for me to have a real conversation with many people because they are too tense to listen. This will be the subject of another piece on this blog. How rare it is to meet someone who is genuinely centered and calm and open to hearing what I have to say. Most people seem, rather, preoccupied with themselves or rather with their fears and worries. It is useless for me to say to them, "Trust" because I know how quickly my own fears trigger anxiety over seemingly inconsequential things. All I can do is turn such feelings over to God and pray, as in Psalm 27: "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?" It also helps to breathe deeply and move in a new direction.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Mindfulness and Merton
"Life is not a set of boundaries but a set of possibilities."
This statement by Thomas Merton should be the official epigraph of this blog. Merton,the American Catholic monk and author, and Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, have been the major influences on my spiritual journey.
Nhat Hanh has reminded all who read his work of the power of being in the present. It's so easy for people like me to worry, be anxious, anticipate the future or return to old issues and relive them in my mind. As soon as I realize that the past is as unreal as the future, that only the present is real, I know I am on the way to some inner peace.
I have learned that meditation means stopping the fast-forward mode in which we all live and calming down, looking deeply at the ordinary things I do (eating, cleaning) and being present to them and to myself: being totally aware of immediate reality.
"Peace of mind" may be a contradiction in terms since if we live in our minds, we are constantly analyzing, thinking, reviewing, etc. We are not centered on the present. And only the present is real. If we are to find God, to feel the presence of God, we must, I think, focus on living consciously in present reality.
Merton, in his extensive writing on contemplation, develops this in terms closer to my own tradition. I have relied on Merton as I have been completing the draft of a book on silence and contemplative prayer.
Merton, writing with the ancient desert fathers in mind, talks eloquently about the importance of letting go of the self--so hard to do--and just being. Letting go of words, living part of each day in solitude and silence, is a challenge for us in this postmodern world, yet how else do we achieve inner peace?
And yet, as a writer, I need words, and so I am not really inwardly silent.
Merton's comment on writing has been of enormous value to me: "Writing is one thing that gives me access to some real silence and solitude. Also I find that it helps me to pray because when I pause at my work I find that the mirror inside me is surprisingly clean and deep and serene and God shines there and is immediately found, without hunting, as if He had come close to me while I was writing."
This statement, too, is likely to be a recurring theme in this blog. Writing, along with reading, we can give me access to my inner being and to the presence of God within me. Merton was both monk and writer, a man who lived with the tension that exists between merely being in the presence of God and writing works that others will read.
Writing can be a form of meditation if I keep my focus on my work and nothing else, if I realize that my goal is not just inner peace but a connection with the divine--mysterious though that sounds.
I am fascinated by the mystery of silence and will have more to say about its power. If religion can be restricting, spirituality is limitless in its possibilities.
There is in our culture a vast hunger for meaning, a healthy longing to encounter the ultimate mystery, whether you call this God or not. I find that silence is a way in to this mystery.
This statement by Thomas Merton should be the official epigraph of this blog. Merton,the American Catholic monk and author, and Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, have been the major influences on my spiritual journey.
Nhat Hanh has reminded all who read his work of the power of being in the present. It's so easy for people like me to worry, be anxious, anticipate the future or return to old issues and relive them in my mind. As soon as I realize that the past is as unreal as the future, that only the present is real, I know I am on the way to some inner peace.
I have learned that meditation means stopping the fast-forward mode in which we all live and calming down, looking deeply at the ordinary things I do (eating, cleaning) and being present to them and to myself: being totally aware of immediate reality.
"Peace of mind" may be a contradiction in terms since if we live in our minds, we are constantly analyzing, thinking, reviewing, etc. We are not centered on the present. And only the present is real. If we are to find God, to feel the presence of God, we must, I think, focus on living consciously in present reality.
Merton, in his extensive writing on contemplation, develops this in terms closer to my own tradition. I have relied on Merton as I have been completing the draft of a book on silence and contemplative prayer.
Merton, writing with the ancient desert fathers in mind, talks eloquently about the importance of letting go of the self--so hard to do--and just being. Letting go of words, living part of each day in solitude and silence, is a challenge for us in this postmodern world, yet how else do we achieve inner peace?
And yet, as a writer, I need words, and so I am not really inwardly silent.
Merton's comment on writing has been of enormous value to me: "Writing is one thing that gives me access to some real silence and solitude. Also I find that it helps me to pray because when I pause at my work I find that the mirror inside me is surprisingly clean and deep and serene and God shines there and is immediately found, without hunting, as if He had come close to me while I was writing."
This statement, too, is likely to be a recurring theme in this blog. Writing, along with reading, we can give me access to my inner being and to the presence of God within me. Merton was both monk and writer, a man who lived with the tension that exists between merely being in the presence of God and writing works that others will read.
Writing can be a form of meditation if I keep my focus on my work and nothing else, if I realize that my goal is not just inner peace but a connection with the divine--mysterious though that sounds.
I am fascinated by the mystery of silence and will have more to say about its power. If religion can be restricting, spirituality is limitless in its possibilities.
There is in our culture a vast hunger for meaning, a healthy longing to encounter the ultimate mystery, whether you call this God or not. I find that silence is a way in to this mystery.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Grammar,Etc.
Greetings!
Although I have been writing and teaching writing for years, this is my initial foray into blogging. My aim is to help other writers either by sharing ideas that have inspired me or by offering advice on writing.
But you don't have to be a writer to read this new blog--you might just be on a spiritual journey similar to mine.
I have two immediate goals, two immediate projects to share. They seem totally unrelated, but of course they are connected. I will save the second one, the spiritual one, for a separate post.
The first is to announce an exciting new venture--a free online writers' guide. At a time when college textbooks have gotten way too pricey, I have found an outfit that makes quality books available free of charge.
My recently published textbook for writers, GRAMMAR,ETC.: THE HANDBOOK FOR WRITERS, which I have written with Donald Pharr, is now availabale as a free download. This book is the 6th edition of a textbook last published by McGraw-Hill in 1997 and now made available by Freeload Press. So if you want to download this book and have it as a handy reference to punctuation, usage, grammar, and style, read on.
Before doing so, you should know that, although this book is written with college students in mind, anyone who writes can benefit from it, and anyone can download it. The informaton is confidential, and the process takes 6-8 minutes. Here's how:
1. Go to freeloadpress.com
2. Go to Booklist
3. Select GRAMMAR, ETC. by Schiffhorst and Pharr
4. Register (as student or instructor). If you are neither of these, when asked to select the state where you attend school, scroll down to bottom of list of states and select OTHER; this will lead you to life-long learner and other non-student options.
5. Download (it comes in groups of chapters since the book is lengthy).
I would like to hear from anyone who has done this. Tell me not only if the process was OK for you but if you found the downloaded book helpful. You can also purchase a printed copy of the book from Freeload Press for $14.95. There is no advertising in the print version, as is there online: now you see how such a book can be marketed gratis.
If you're struggling with writer's block, maybe I can help. If you have questions about usage or style, send them on to me at schiffhorst@yahoo.com.
My students either call me Dr. S or Dr. J (for Jerry) since my last name is unusual.
Cheers!
Gerald Schiffhorst
Although I have been writing and teaching writing for years, this is my initial foray into blogging. My aim is to help other writers either by sharing ideas that have inspired me or by offering advice on writing.
But you don't have to be a writer to read this new blog--you might just be on a spiritual journey similar to mine.
I have two immediate goals, two immediate projects to share. They seem totally unrelated, but of course they are connected. I will save the second one, the spiritual one, for a separate post.
The first is to announce an exciting new venture--a free online writers' guide. At a time when college textbooks have gotten way too pricey, I have found an outfit that makes quality books available free of charge.
My recently published textbook for writers, GRAMMAR,ETC.: THE HANDBOOK FOR WRITERS, which I have written with Donald Pharr, is now availabale as a free download. This book is the 6th edition of a textbook last published by McGraw-Hill in 1997 and now made available by Freeload Press. So if you want to download this book and have it as a handy reference to punctuation, usage, grammar, and style, read on.
Before doing so, you should know that, although this book is written with college students in mind, anyone who writes can benefit from it, and anyone can download it. The informaton is confidential, and the process takes 6-8 minutes. Here's how:
1. Go to freeloadpress.com
2. Go to Booklist
3. Select GRAMMAR, ETC. by Schiffhorst and Pharr
4. Register (as student or instructor). If you are neither of these, when asked to select the state where you attend school, scroll down to bottom of list of states and select OTHER; this will lead you to life-long learner and other non-student options.
5. Download (it comes in groups of chapters since the book is lengthy).
I would like to hear from anyone who has done this. Tell me not only if the process was OK for you but if you found the downloaded book helpful. You can also purchase a printed copy of the book from Freeload Press for $14.95. There is no advertising in the print version, as is there online: now you see how such a book can be marketed gratis.
If you're struggling with writer's block, maybe I can help. If you have questions about usage or style, send them on to me at schiffhorst@yahoo.com.
My students either call me Dr. S or Dr. J (for Jerry) since my last name is unusual.
Cheers!
Gerald Schiffhorst
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