In a world full of solutions, opinions, and advice, the listening ear is one of the most important gifts we can offer one another. It is an act of healing and vision. For people of faith and their communities, the gift of listening both to one another and God offers individuals a path to spiritual renewal and grants congregations a vision of their identity. In a time when congregations are in steep decline and facing significant uncertainty, learning to listen to one another to discern God’s path for a faith community’s future just might be one of the most important acts a church can engage. It is for this reason Rev. Chad Abbott and I wrote the book Incline Your Ear: Cultivating Spiritual Awakening in Congregations.
God is Still Speaking
Rev. Abbott and I minister in a denomination (UCC) that believes “God is still speaking.” The phrase is more than a slogan or a denominational campaign. It expresses the reality that God is much more mysterious and far-reaching than we can understand. While the Bible continues to serve as the primary source of revelation for Christians, God is still being revealed to us in this world, in a culture the ancient world could not have imagined. As our good friend Rev. Mike Mather is fond of saying, “God didn’t stop speaking just because the book went to press.”
Listen with the Ear of the Heart
If God is still speaking, we need to find a way to listen deeply, to “listen with the ears of our heart,” as Saint Benedict of Nursia has said.
Benedict’s notion of listening with more than our ears is key. While modern medicine views the heart primarily as a vital organ in the body, the heart as metaphor carries even greater weight. Phrases such as “take heart” and “speak from the heart,” learning something “by heart,” and having a “heart-to-heart” conversation all point to the understanding that the heart is the seat of the emotions. In ancient Egypt, people believed that the human soul was made up of many different parts of the body, but the key to the soul and to the afterlife was the heart, for it was the seat of emotion, will, and intention.
The heart is a metaphor for our deepest passions, our longing for community and belonging, particularly with the Divine. With the heart as such a powerful metaphor in our understanding of community and belonging, Benedict was right to urge us to listen with the ears of our heart.
In upcoming blog posts, we will be sharing more excerpts from our book Incline Your Ear: Cultivating Spiritual Awakening in Congregations from Fortress Press about how congregations can listen to God .
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