Listening is the most important element of effective communication, yet it is not a skill most of us invest in improving. It is a skill that can be developed, but it must be practiced. In this edition of By Your Life, we’ll discuss how to transform your life by becoming a better listener.

Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_03_17.mp3

Second Sunday of Lent – March 17, 2019

Welcome to the fifty-first episode of By Your Life. Thank you for joining me. If you haven’t already, please subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher, or on the right side of this page so I can send you notifications when each new episode is posted. And please forward to a friend, if you think they would benefit from By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It is my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace and to trust that it is good for business. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Second Sunday of Lent. This is one of my favorite Gospels: The Transfiguration of Jesus. It is one of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary that we ponder on Thursdays. I try to imagine what it must have been like for Peter, James, and John to witness Jesus in dazzling white and conversing with Moses and Elijah. (Lk 9:29-30) I think about the one and only time in my life when I had my own “mountain top” experience during prayer, and how I longed to stay there but was brought back down to continue living in the here and now. Peter also wanted to stay there and erect tents, but Jesus had to complete the mission for which he was sent, so did Peter, and so do we.

If you, like me, are in the marketplace on a daily basis, we are called to share the Gospel by our lives in our workplaces. We have a mission and after Mass each Sunday, we are sent out to complete that mission, to glorify the Lord by our lives—lives that are filled with challenges, difficult people, hard work, and suffering. This is the here and now we live in where we are called to bring Jesus. But sometimes we don’t even exit the parking lot at church before we are sucked into the mire and forget what we just experienced.

One of the ways I serve my clients is by facilitating leadership retreats. It is good for leaders to get away for a while, refocus on the company’s purpose, and strengthen the team. They are usually invigorated by having spent time together, away from distractions, and inspired by the promise of implementing the vision of their organization. Knowing that this enthusiasm can be short-lived once they return to the office and face the fires that have been smoldering in their absence, I encourage them to specifically identify what they want to do differently when they get back, so that their motivation is carried forward into the workplace, instead of smothered by the day-to-day issues that are waiting for them when they return. I ask them to commit to “one thing” that they plan to do differently as a result of their retreat experience.

I wonder if the three apostles were transformed at all by experiencing the Transfiguration of Jesus. Did the other disciples notice that they were different when they came down from the mountain? Were they strengthened by what they witnessed? Did they encourage others? Did they do anything differently? At first, “they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.” (Lk 9:36) We know that eventually, Peter, James, and John did share the experience, otherwise, we wouldn’t be here talking about the Transfiguration nearly two centuries later.

I know from experience that not all the leaders who participate in our retreats share anything about it with their team when they return. They are not engaged and therefore nothing is different for them. From time to time, there are one or more participants who are there as a prisoner. They think the retreat is a waste of time, that nothing will change, and that they have more important work to do back at the office. They get nothing out of the experience because they believe going into it that they have nothing to gain. They are distracted by their texts and emails, so they don’t appreciate what is being said, nor do they contribute. They are just there out of obligation.

Has this ever been you at Mass on Sunday? I must admit, this does describe me from time to time. I may be physically there, but I’m not engaged. I am present, but my mind is stuck in the past or planning the future. I’m so preoccupied that I miss the voice of God in his Word. I get so distracted that I am totally unaware of everything that happens between the “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts…” and the “Through Him, with Him, and in Him…”. There was an amazing transformation that just occurred in my presence and I missed it.

About 10 years ago, Matthew Kelly came to speak at our parish. It was then that I first heard about keeping a Mass journal. Knowing our human limitations, Matthew Kelly suggests approaching each Mass with the intent to leave changed in one small way. He encourages us to bring a journal and write down that one thing that God wants you to take away from Mass that day. I started this practice years ago. Since I’ve now been a daily Mass participant for years, I have dozens of these small books in a drawer, filled with gems that God spoke to me. These are gems I would have missed if I wasn’t present, engaged, and listening.

This Sunday, the voice that came from the cloud was speaking to us when He said, “This is my chosen Son; listen to him.” (Lk 9:35) Do we listen?

Listening is a skill that can be developed, but it must be practiced. It is the most important element of effective communication, yet it is not a skill most of us invest in improving. Sure, we join Toastmasters to become better speakers, but where is the worldwide organization that attracts millions of members who are interested in becoming better listeners? You might argue that part of Toastmasters’ training is to learn how to listen to others, but as Simon Sinek said, “There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak.”

Years ago, when I first started my own business and I was working with my coach, I complained about how I hated going to networking events at the chamber of commerce. I loathed having to engage in idle conversation with people I didn’t know about topics I wasn’t interested in. I will never forget what he said to me:

“Lisa, do you think that you are a person who respects other people?” Of course, I wanted to think that I did. He continued, “Do you think that whatever they are talking about is important to them?” Of course, I suspected that it was. And then he asked, “How much respect do you think you show someone when you are not interested in something that is important to them?”

I felt as if someone had kicked me in the gut. He helped me recognize how my behavior—my lack of desire to listen—was, in fact, a lack of respect for the other person.

So, I began to approach these networking functions with a new attitude. I didn’t try to pretend that what they were talking about was important to me. Instead, with genuine interest, I asked questions and listened to understand why it was so important to them! I began to listen with curiosity. Instead of looking for an opening so I could take control and redirect the conversation to something I cared about, I began responding with “That’s interesting, tell me more.” or “That’s really interesting. How did you get started in that?” I began to listen with respect. And, I began to listen with humility—that perhaps, there was something I might learn from them.

Listening is the doorway to learning. It may be a fact, or more often, another person’s perspective of the facts. Regardless, there is always something that can be learned by listening. The award-winning TV and radio show host, Larry King said, “I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So, if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.”

As we age, our hearing is one of the many capacities we begin to lose. This is certainly true in my house. My 93 ½-year-old mother has a significantly diminished ability to hear. I can always tell when she doesn’t have her hearing aids in because when I speak, there is no response. You can hear without listening, but you cannot listen without hearing. Because as Pauline Oliveros, composer, performer, and humanitarian said, “Hearing and listening are not the same thing.”

An anagram of the word “listen” is “silent.” You must be silent to listen. You must not just silence your mouth, but the voices in your head. This is a skill that begins with desire and is honed with practice. It is a process of focus, failure, and refocus. When these voices speak up, quiet them by bringing your attention back to the speaker.

The one place I fail at being an effective listener more than any other is prayer. I’m always so busy talking to God, laying out my petitions and supplications, and I struggle to listen. It is practically impossible for me to silence the voices. Yet, St. Mother Teresa said, “I always begin my prayer in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks.” I guess the trick is to be able to recognize when the voice I hear is God in my heart instead of my own voice in my head. Perhaps the key to discerning the difference is love. I’m not sure who said it, but there is truth in the statement, “You don’t know how to love if you don’t know how to listen.”

The next time you are in a meeting, at a retreat, or at Mass, choose to be there as an engaged participant and not out of obligation or as a prisoner. And while participation includes speaking when it is your turn, or when you have something of value to add, be an engaged participant by listening with curiosity, humility and love, so that, as a result of investing your time there, you are better, transformed in some small way, by the experience and put into action what you gained.

Let’s ask the sisters, St. Mary, who listened at the foot of Jesus, and St. Martha, who served Him, to pray for us as we go through this week, so that we may love others by how we listen to them and serve others by our lives.

O Saints Mary and Martha, with whom our Lord Jesus Christ enjoyed rest and refreshment in your home in Bethany, pray that we have the will to love God, hearts open to hear Him, and strength in our hands to serve Him and others. Pray that we may be people who listen with love. Amen.

May God bless you abundantly this week and may you glorify the Lord by your life. Amen.

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