| Hearing
with the Soul
Fr.
George Smiga
September
9-10, 2006
Mark
7:31-37
A
farmer from Salina , Kansas decided it was time to visit an
old high school buddy who had lived for many years in New
York City . It was the farmer's first visit to New York ,
and he was overwhelmed by the size of the buildings and the
hectic lifestyle. As the two friends were making their way
down Fifth Avenue , wending their way through the crowded
streets and busy traffic, suddenly the farmer stopped and
said, “Hey! I hear a cricket.” “You've got to be kidding,”
said his friend from New York . “Even if there were a cricket
around, and I doubt that that is the case, how could you possibly
hear it over all this noise?” But the farmer stood there for
a few moments and then took a few steps to the corner, where
there was a bush growing in a cement container. He turned
over a few leaves and there, sure enough, was a cricket. “What
amazing hearing you have,” said his friend from the city.
“That's not the case,” said the farmer. “Your hearing is as
good as mine. We all hear what we are conditioned to hear.”
Whereupon he pulled out of his pocket a handful of change
and let it fall to the sidewalk. When the coins hit the ground,
as if on cue, about a dozen heads turned to hear what the
sound was. “You see,” said the farmer, “we hear the things
that are important to us. It's all a matter of what you're
listening for.”
Hearing
is more than a biological ability. Our hearing is influenced
by what we value and what we believe.
It
is for this reason that Christians should have a deeper hearing,
because of our faith, because we believe that God is real
and active in our world. We do, after all, believe that God
created us and all creation, and saw it as good. We do believe
that God is active now in our world, saving it, bringing Good
News to the poor and freedom to the oppressed. We do believe
that God is intent on establishing a kingdom, a kingdom of
goodness, love and peace. If we believe these things, should
we not be able to hear the sounds of that kingdom coming?
Now
I know it is possible for believing people to at times be
pessimistic and fearful. I know that any one of us can be
overcome with a feeling of worthlessness and hopelessness.
But there should always be a suspicion among believers that
these negative attitudes, when they occur within us, are at
least partly a result of our failure to hear the sounds of
God's activity around us.
Why,
then, do we not hear God's activity around us? We are conditioned
to hear something else. We might have had failures in relationships.
We may have been hurt in love. Now our ears are conditioned
to hear every rustle of rejection and negativity, but deaf
to hear the voices of those who are rightly affirming us and
inviting us to new possibilities. We might be very successful,
financially secure, confident in our own abilities. Thus our
ears easily pick up things that affirm our goodness and our
potential. Yet, at the same time, we can be deaf to the pain
of those who are weak and impatient with those who turn to
us looking for compassion. We can be conditioned by loss or
grief, so that every noise of emptiness or hopelessness becomes
amplified. That grief can drown out the voices of those still
loving us and the whisper of God's spirit promising us that
there will come a time when we laugh again.
It
is easy in our country to be conditioned by fear, as we approach
another anniversary of 9/11. We can register the rumble of
our vulnerability and recognize the likelihood that there
will someday be another terrorist attack. But can our ears
hear the courage and the faith of our ancestors who established
this country over overwhelming odds? Can we believe that we
have that same courage and faith to rise to the occasion and,
even though vulnerable, still live as a free people without
abandoning our basic principles?
What
we believe, what we value, influences what we hear. Therefore,
if we are not hearing any good news, not only do we need to
open our ears; we need also to open our hearts. This is why
Jesus in today's gospel says to the deaf man, “Be opened.”
We are that deaf man, because there are good things that we
are not hearing. We need to believe that God will open us,
that God can open us, that God can remove our deafness. We
must trust that God can remove our hurt, our pride, our grief,
our fear. We must believe that God is active, that God is
in fact building the kingdom and making noise doing so. If
a farmer can hear a cricket in New York City , then certainly
we should be able to hear the thunder of God's spirit recreating
the earth.
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