Encountering God in our Brokenness

A reflection on 1 Samuel 1

I have come to realise that we all have burdens in our lives that we keep on carrying around with us, year after year, after year, after year… There aren’t many spaces where we feel we can allow ourselves to be seen, really and completely seen.

In 1 Samual 1, we read how Hannah is taunted and bullied by her rival wife, because she hasn’t got any children. The bullying had been going on year after year. Every time she went to the sanctuary of God she could expect to be taunted… It is only after a very long time that Hannah has the courage to pull herself together, slip away quietly and enter the sanctuary to pray.

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The Power of Listening

I just finished my first year at the Encounter Course at the London Centre of Spiritual Direction. This is a refection on one of the main lessons I am taking away from this year.

It has been such an exciting journey to discover how powerful listening really is. How listening in itself is just enough. It is one of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone. It is in the being listened to that people are changed.

It is something so simple, so straightforward; anyone can offer it, but yet so powerful and so life changing. Someone said, ‘being heard is so close to being loved that, for the average person, they are virtually indistinguishable’ (D. Augsberger).

When Someone Deeply Listens To You

I have started a new course in Spiritual Direction called Encounter at the London Centre for Spirituality. I am hoping to share a bit more about the content of this course in future posts. For now, I would like to focus on one of the first subjects we looked into on the course, which was ‘listening’.

In our small groups, everyone was asked to talk on a specific subject for five minutes without being interrupted. The rest of the group was asked to listen and reflect on their listening, noticing any distractions and specific feelings that came up while listening.