Listening to our lives

HAVE you listened recently? As in really listened?

Our lives are often so complicated and busy that we forget to listen to our own life.

Within us there is a small voice that is trying to break through and is longing to speak to us.

The intention is not for the voice to start to control our lives, but to help us trust it to set us free.

To develop the discipline of listening to our lives takes time and is not like any other exercise of listening.

Theologian Parker Palmer once said, "the soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting and trustworthy conditions.”

The voice within is not overpowering, loud and forceful, but gentle, quiet and somewhat shy so we need to make room for it and invite it to speak.

In the letter to the Romans in the Bible, Paul writes in chapter 8 verse 5: “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.”

When we listen to our lives and its true desires, its energy and its love, we embark on the journey of discovering who we really are.

Listening to our lives is a practice of turning our minds and hearts towards the life within that shapes and transforms us into who God created us to be.