Journal of Sacred Work

Today's meditation was written by Cathy Self, Senior Vice-President for the Baptist Healing Trust.

      Listening with the ears of our hearts, recognizing need before it can even be expressed is surely a great gift of the Servant's Heart. This week I have listened for the sounds of a 20-month-old's awakening, sometimes in the middle of night, always at daybreak. Often the sounds are clearly a search for the familiar face and sweet smile of his mom; other times this young adventurer-explorer awakens with abject joy in the dancing light that sneaks its way through the shutters making patterns on the wall that tell a great story. He hears airplanes so distant my ears and eyes cannot even conceive of and points, looks, and he waits . . . until my attention and my understanding can meet him at his place of wonder.

     Both my 95-year-old mother in law who lives with us and my young grandson visiting for a few days are teaching me to to watch, to wait, to listen in new ways. Poet William Stafford writes of listening with ears that must be of the heart:

"My father could hear a little animal step,/ or a moth in the dark against the screen,/ and every far sound called the listening out/ into places where the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night/ than came to our porch for us on the wind;/ we would watch him look up and his face go keen/ till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father heard so much that we still stand/ inviting the quiet by turning the face,/ waiting for a time when something in the night/ will touch us too from that other place."

Watching shadows cross the face, translating syllables into words, asking and then asking again so that need may be met – is this not what our days of giving care are all about? What does your heart hear today that touches you "from that other place?"