Being, doing and listening well

It was a Saturday evening and after a family teatime, I went into the study to look over my sermon notes for the following morning. I had not been in there long before one of my children came in to see me. “Hi Joshua, good to see you. What are you doing?” “Nothing, Dad.” “What do you want?” ‘Nothing,” he replied. I then went through a whole gamut of questions, “Are you hungry? Do you want a drink? Shall we read a story? Play a game? You okay?” It was lovely that he'd come to see me, but why? “What is it you want Joshua?” “Dad, I just want to be with you!”

The psalmist wrote, ‘Out of the mouths of babies and infants’! That experience was to change not only the course of my ministry but my life.

A busy activist, charismatic, evangelical, the senior pastor of a large church, leading a team, running myriad services and programmes, meetings, vision casting, fulfilling aims and objectives… if we were being measured on the sheer volume of the things that we were doing, we would have been near the top of the league.

However, carrying the demands and responsibilities of leading a church, I had substituted my relationship with God for working for God. I had inadvertently and unconsciously become like a CEO of a busy successful organisation and, in the words of the songwriter Paul Simon, found that so many of my energies were ‘trying to keep the customer (congregation, members and other leaders) satisfied’.

When people commented on how busy I was, it was seen as a virtue. The prevailing modus operandi of the Protestant work ethic regards being busy as a good thing.

The ‘repentance’ – because that's what it was, (metanoia, the Greek name used in the Gospels to describes a U-turn, a reorientation of one's whole life, that transforms the way we think, feel and act) - began with those words from my young son, “I just want to be with you.” It continues to challenge, encourage and inspire me today.

It is a reminder that being busy can be avoidance of the things that truly matter, and for anyone who follows Christ, what really matters is relationship: loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbour as we would love ourselves.

It was Thomas Merton, the American Trappist monk, writer and theologian who said, “The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist...destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

As Companions in the Northumbria Community, we draw heavily on the inspiration from the monastic tradition. In our Celtic Daily Prayer, Morning Office begins with the “one thing necessary”, reflecting the words of the psalmist in Ps 27:4: “One thing I have asked of the Lord, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the House of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

The liturgy goes on to ask:

Do you seek him with all your heart? Amen, Lord, have mercy.

Do you seek him with all your soul. Amen, Lord, have mercy.

Do you seek him with all your mind. Amen, Lord, have mercy.

Do you seek him with all your strength. Amen, Christ have mercy.

It's a great reminder at the start of the day that our intention and calling is to seek, love, live and serve out of our relationship with the living God, the one in whom we live, move and have our very being. This not in isolation, but in relationship with our neighbour, with all whom we meet and share in the day ahead. As the canticle in our Morning Office goes on to say, “Be in the heart of each to whom I speak, in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.”

As I get older, I become increasingly aware that so much of my own, the church’s and society’s endeavours are rooted more in our own ideas, techniques, management skills and innovation, to which we invite God’s blessing to be upon. Projects and programmes rooted in human endeavour, idealism, personal or party preferences and persuasions, doctrinal statements, particular and often partisan theological and biblical perspectives, and not those that flow out of relationship with God.

In John’s Gospel we read that Jesus only did what he saw the Father doing. That is not only a description or commentary on the life of Jesus, but a challenge to all of us. For us to do what God is doing requires us to be in relationship, listening to the heartbeat of God for the world; listening to the whispers of the Spirit at work in places and among people where we find ourselves; listening and looking, discerning and discovering where God is at work and then joining in. Not by striving and driving things but by learning to dwell in relationship with God and being with God, is how we will learn to do the things that see the Kingdom coming here on earth as it is in heaven.

It is a way of being, of being with God, sitting in that still place of solitude and silence, waiting, resting, contemplating, delighting and not just knowing about but knowing from the heart of relationship.

The intentional practice of quiet listening prayer slows us down and delivers us from hurry, drivenness and the binding sense of ‘oughtness’, i.e. what we and others feel we ought to be doing. There is a time for doing but there is a time for just being.

It's in being that we become aware of the Other. By listening we become attentive and alert.

It’s in being with God that our hearts are warmed by the love of God, as well as being exposed to who we truly are. The ‘landscape of our hearts’ is revealed, our strengths and weaknesses, passions and monsters, our sin and brokenness, our true beliefs and behaviours, motives and mistakes - all exposed but before a God of unconditional mercy and grace.

It is then out of relationship with the all-knowing, all-loving, redeeming and transforming God that we discover our true identity in Christ; life as God intends and from which flows our joining in with what the Spirit is doing in the world.

We don’t stay constantly in that place of aloneness with God but carry the fruits of our being with God into our service of God and neighbour. We take the gift of being with God beyond the place of silence and solitude into the world, listening to the Spirit and looking for the signs of the Kingdom all around.

I heard the story of an aborigine visiting the USA for the first time. His American host took him into downtown New York during rush hour. The severe traffic congestion and crowded subways all contributed to a great cacophony of sound. The aborigine stopped in the middle of all the crowds of people and the noise of traffic, and said to his host, “Did you hear that? Did you hear the cricket (insect)?” His bemused host couldn’t understand such a thing until his guest walked over to a hanging basket in a nearby shop, picked up the cricket and said, “It depends on what you’re listening to.”

As we venture into the gift and opportunity of this new week, with all the demands and responsibilities, the people we will meet and the places we will go, let’s be gently reminded of the gracious invitation and necessity to take some time to be with God and in all the things that we will do, to keep listening and looking for what God is up to and to join in the adventure of seeing the Spirit of God at work in the world.

Take care

Roy Searle

Guest contributor

Roy Searle, is an advisor to RM, a Companion and former leader of Northumbria Community, a former President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain.