Strength Training - Practicing Listening Prayer
Some years ago, my daughter meekly approached the table where I was sitting. She stood quietly peering over my shoulder to see if it was ok for her to join me at the table.
“You know what,” I said.
“What?”
“Your sensitivity is a great gift.”
My daughter smiled. “Thank you,” she said. Her eyes were warm but tinged with a little middle-school suspicion. Perhaps she was hoping to avoid a lecture about being more assertive.
I smiled back. “It means you will have insight into what others are thinking and feeling. Though you will need to check because sometimes your intuitions can be wrong.”
“Hmmm,” she said.
“But” I continued, “if you hold yourself back, you're only giving half of the gift.”
“What do mean,” she said.
Our conversation continued. “There is a difference between being sensitive to the needs of others and being insensitive to your own. Your need for a place to have breakfast is just as important as my need for a quiet space to think and pray. I want you to learn not to hold yourself back so that you can bring your full self to relationships. That way when people see you and experience your sensitivity, they get the whole gift not just half of it. Does that make sense?”
She paused, “It does.”
It seems to me that one of the best reasons to practice listening prayer is that it’s a practice that allows us to develop the inner strength to be present to others. Like my daughter, I can easily approach interactions with others through my strengths. I can attempt to impress with words, or project an image of confidence, intelligence, or attentiveness. It’s only as I reflect on the interaction later that I realize how distracted I’d been by the desire to please, impress, manage, or win someone over, I’d been. The interaction goes well, but I’m exhausted.
The connection to listing prayer might not be an intuitive solution to the problem I’ve been describing, but the more I reflect, the more I see that the best gift any of us has to offer another person is our full and unguarded attention. It is this ability to be both present and unguarded that makes interactions with young children so precious. If we value time with people who are, “at home in their own skin,” as the saying goes, why do we struggle to offer the same? I propose that it takes tremendous inner strength to be present and open to others, and most of us could use some more strength.
In listening prayer, we practice simple, unguarded, attentive, presence to God. As we simply sit, or stand, or walk, in listening prayer, we come face to face with our fears, (what if nothing happens?) distractions, (I need to… what about… did I forget?) and disappointments. Over time we get stronger, discovering we can sit still for two, ten, or ever twenty whole minutes with minimal distraction. We discover that God isn’t someone we need to impress, manage, or win over. Learning to be present to God helps us to be present to ourselves and to others. We stop hiding behind our gifts and begin to offering others our whole gift.
Here’s a simple way to practice listening prayer.
(Read Psalm 16:1-2)
Sit in a chair and see if you can focus all of your attention on allowing God to love you.
Do this for thirty seconds, then one minute, then two minutes. Practice until you can do this for ten minutes or more.
Keep a record of what you notice during these times.