Summer’s Gift

Summer is such an amazing gift of time to step back from the busyness of life and behold the Source of life more freely. A part of my summer has been claiming more time and space for this relationship. One way, was to go on a retreat in the contemplative-eremetic community of Lebh Shomea. There is a spaciousness and silence there inviting each person to simply listen and be transformed by that openness.

From a contemplative perspective, listening is allowing ourselves to be opened and available to Love. It is being drawn into the mystery of Love that goes beyond any description, any expression, any attempt to quantify or qualify.

John Main in his The Way of Unknowing speaks of meditation as “We come to see that He (God) is love and in a true sense, meditating is simply uncovering the love that is God in our own hearts.” It is a way of listening.

In my retreat, I was filled with a silence so deep and broad that it expanded within me and in the world around me. As I returned to Austin, I drove into our neighborhood and its silence opened her arms to me. I walked into the house and even the cats gazed in silent welcoming. The back yard echoed silence flooding the trees, the sky, the buildings and the world with its silent music. Listening is a gift that as Main says, ‘uncovers the Love that is God’. It opens us to see what was always there, but we are not always available to see it. In listening we come to ‘see’. In seeing, our lives and our worlds take on new meaning, new vibrancy and new possibilities. In listening we become transformers within the lives that we live.

May each of us continue to be opened by our listening and more loving through uncovering Love within all of life.