Back when our boys were in elementary school, my wife Wendy and I used to take them to visit the residents of the Tustin Hacienda Senior Care Home in Tustin, California. We were usually visiting as part of our monthly outreach with our Kids Rock students at the Church we had helped to start that met just up the street.
Our usual routine was to gather all the seniors in the large community room around 2 p.m. for a song service, and then the parents would take their kids around the room to visit with the residents for a few hours.
The conversation time was what the seniors there loved most. I’ll never forget one dear woman who took my hand and pulled me down close enough for her to whisper to me, “The singing is okay, but we don’t need it. Just keep bringing the children around so we can see their sweet faces.”
For those seniors who were too frail to get out of their rooms, we would make our rounds to pray over them, or just sit and listen to them talk to us about their day or share stories about their lives growing up.
Remembering Our Friends
We all had our favorites. Alvin had a wide smile and a huge white beard that made him look like Santa. He loved to tell us stories about when he was a cook for General Patton’s soldiers during World War 2; cooking enough chili for 200 men while bullets and mortars went off all around him. Roger loved to talk about his years working for the C.I.A., and how he was one of the architects of the contingency plan for evacuating essential personnel in the event of a nuclear attack. Dorothy was in a wheelchair and had a rare disease that made it hard for her to use her hands, and she had no fingerprints. She loved talking about her daughters and grandchildren with us.
What all of those beautiful people taught us was the importance of listening to one another. Our expression of love was to simply pay attention to each of them for a few minutes and share the joy, the wonder, the pain, and the beauty of the life they had once lived. It made them feel seen. It made the feel alive. It made them feel loved.
Ministry of Listening
My friend Thomas Crisp taught me a lot about the ministry of listening. He used to get up early on a Sunday morning, put on a pair of old jeans and a t-shirt and drive over to the Dorothy Day House in Santa Ana, California. What he liked to do was to stand in line with all the other people who were there for the free breakfast so he could sit at a table with them and just listen to their stories. He didn’t try to fix anyone. He never offered unsolicited spiritual advice. He simply sat down, ate his lukewarm eggs, and learned how to listen to the people most of us never even take the time to look in the eye.
Isn’t it fascinating how listening to someone can be an expression of love? How being still, and quiet can open us up to receive someone’s story? How our connection with other people begins with an expression of genuine curiosity about who they are, or what they think, or how they feel?
Learning To Listen To God
This is why I believe it’s so important for us to come to God like this. To be still. To listen. To express genuine curiosity about a God who loves us more than we can possibly imagine, or comprehend. What better way to express our love for God than to sit quietly in God’s presence and simply listen?
After all, doesn’t a Being beyond our imagination deserve our curiosity? Isn’t silence the appropriate response to someone so unimaginably grand? How could we even consider coming into the presence of anyone so endlessly fascinating with anything but awe in our hearts?
If listening to someone is equated with loving them, then might I suggest that – if we want to know God better – we should listen to God? If we want to experience more of God, we could begin by slowing down, taking a deep breath or two, and simply taking time to love God with our listening.
We can even show our love for God by the way we show our love for others: by listening. If we listen to others, we are loving them, and, at the very same time, we are loving God, too.
Practical Experimentation
Have you ever tried this? Have you ever found a quiet place, turned off your phone, focused on your breathing, and just spent an hour or so in silence?
When we are quiet, wisdom floods into the empty space. When we simply rest in God’s presence, our spirit begins to resonate at the frequency of the Divine. When we stop talking, stop asking, stop complaining, stop trying to find the answers; that’s when we come to the beginning of wisdom; when we realize that God is right here, and has always been here, and will never leave us; never forsake us.
I love the way Alan Watts describes the wisdom that we can experience when we simply sit quietly and breathe:
“You wait. You watch, and all that you see is what is happening of itself. You are breathing. The wind is blowing. The trees are waving. Your blood is circulating. Your nerves are tingling. It’s all going on by itself. But, you know, that’s you. That’s the real you. The you that goes on of itself…it’s you that is happening as when you breathe. Yes, you can get the feeling that ‘I am breathing’ by shoving your breath. But your breath goes on, day in and day out, without you ever doing anything about it, or even thinking of it. The same way your brain is functioning without you forcing it. So…this is the moment of which it is said man’s extremity becomes God’s opportunity. Because we have to stop. And when we stop we find a world that is happening rather than being done…and that happening, as distinct from doing, is our fundamental self…and our fundamental self is not just inside the skin. It’s everything around us with which we connect.”
The Beauty of Connection
Connection is a very strong theme that I hope to develop. Connection with God. Connection with others. Connection with our true selves. This is something many of us have lost touch with. We no longer feel a genuine connection with God because we’ve spent so much time going to church, or serving in the ministry, or running the endless hamster wheel of quiet time and morning devotionals and Bible studies, and daily journaling, and so many other religious activities. Ironically, these things may only end up making us feel exhausted trying to check all the boxes, or make us feel guilty for failing to keep the pace with these unrealistic expectations, all of which are grounded in doing more rather than slowing down and breathing deep the breath of God which is all around us, all the time.
All of our religious striving only ends up making us feel farther away from God, not truly connected to God in a real, intimate way. So, maybe the problem is that we’ve understood “knowing God” the wrong way? Maybe it’s not about filling our minds with information, or scheduling endless activities that demand every waking moment of our attention. Maybe there’s a much simpler, more natural way of connecting with God?
“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears and never regrets.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
NOTE: This post was taken from my book, SOLA MYSTERIUM: Celebrating the Beautiful Uncertainty of Everything, available now on Amazon.
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The newest book from Keith Giles, “The Quantum Sayings of Jesus: Decoding the Lost Gospel of Thomas” is available now on Amazon. Order HERE>
Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.”
He co-hosts The Heretic Happy Hour Podcast and his solo podcast, Second Cup With Keith which are both available on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Podbean or wherever you find your podcast fix.
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