Reflection on Mission: Generative Listening

By Melanie Guste, RSCJ

“If people are to discover the significance of their lives so that they will choose to participate creatively in the common effort to transform the world, they need to learn to appreciate and honor other people’s points of view.” (Sophie’s Gift, p.7)

Not long ago on a pilgrimage of hope to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, I sat in a circle with a group of fellow “justice pilgrims” around a small prayer mat with a candle to pray, reflect, and listen deeply to the stories of history reverberating in the spirt of each one. St. Madeleine Sophie Barat did the same thing in her day, intentionally calling the sisters in community together in the evening to each share a moment, experience, or event in the day around a candle. (It is said that she used a pin in a candle to mark the amount of time that they had to share.)

Over the recent Dr. Martin Luther King’s weekend, the “Quad Area Gathering”—a group of RSCJ and Associates who have been in ministries across the Gulf Coast—met once again to sit in a circle and to do much the same: listen to each one share their stories of the past year. (Today, we do not use a pin in a candle, but a timer on a cellphone.)

A person’s story has a way of laying a claim on one’s heart.  It goes to your heart like an arrow. It’s truth piercing its way through the layers of our consciousness. The story of one person has that capacity: to change and to convert.

Listening deeply to each one with a “contemplative sensitivity,” (Sophie’s Gift, p. 6) awakens our senses to the touch of the Holy Spirit. Listening deeply to each one with openness and hospitality generates compassion. Listening deeply to each one with appreciation inspires creativity and discovery, new ways of seeing. Listening deeply to each one with respect encourages commitment.

A person’s story is their truth, so listening deeply to the telling of it is an educator’s commitment to ongoing formation and to learning. It is a simple, but powerful act of justice, mercy and compassion.

Imagine the power of the collective story—the story that leaves the room with the “justice pilgrims” and with the Quad Area participants: the story that shifts from the “I” to the “We” because we listened deeply, heard, and felt the touch of the Holy Spirit among us. Imagine the difference that collective story can create for one another and for the larger whole. That difference is the power of “generative listening” and “generative learning.” (Sophie’s Gift, p. 6, 7) It is our work to do, now and for our world.

Madeleine Sophie once counseled, “Be faithful to the touch of the Holy Spirit upon your soul. The Holy Spirit when free, works marvels within us.”  As bearers of the Sacred Heart mission, purposely creating circles of “generative listening” with a contemplative sensitivity is a specific concrete antidote to the destructive forces of violence, hatred, and fear that are so prevalent in our world today.

Questions for Reflection

• How has listening deeply to another effected a change?
• In what ways has your “truth-telling” effected a change in another?
• What are some recent examples of the ways in which the story of another inspired an action in you?    

Photo by Alina Bitta