Being All Ear For God

In today's reading Henri Nouen writes that true prayer is being "all ear" for God, always alert and listening for the still, small voice of God in our lives.  How difficult this is for us!  So often prayer time is cut short by other more intrusive and demanding voices.  What will I make for supper?  Have I done the laundry?  How will I get to all three meetings that I have today?  Don't forget the grandchildrens' swim meet. And on and on.  It takes real discipline (that pesky Lenten word!) to shut those voices out and to open our hearts to God and God alone, if only for a few minutes.

I think it is not only in those moments that we purposefully set aside for prayer that we need to be alert, still, listening.  It is all the time! The other day I was rushing around trying to get things done when I caught sight of a crow struggling in our yard with a very long, thin branch that had fallen from the maple tree. It was about ten times the size of the bird, but he was determined.  He walked around it, plucked at it, pushed at it with his beak, tried to get a grip on it.  He must have been a good five minutes trying to lift that branch and I found myself rooting for him.  Come on! You can do it!  He finally got his beak around a thinner part of the branch and tried to fly away with it.  He flapped his wings fiercely but to no avail.  At last he flew away to settle, not happily I imagine, in the higher branches of the tree.

So what has this got to do with prayer, you may ask?  Well, I think it was prayer, in a way.  It was noticing what was going on.  It was seeing one of God's creatures (although crows are not my favorite of those creatures) in a rather comical but earnest quest to accomplish the impossible, and I was in awe of his determination.  I was, at that moment, "all ear" for God through that ugly back bird.

Maybe we need that kind of determination in our prayer lives, as we try to become "all ear" to God, whether sitting quietly by ourselves, or paying attention to God's world out there, a world more full of joy and mystery than we can imagine.

Audrey