The Wild Reed: A Season of Listening

Friday, January 26, 2024

A Season of Listening

Thirty years ago today I arrived in Minneapolis from Sydney, Australia for what, at the time, I thought would be a 3-4 year stay in the U.S. to complete my Masters in Theology at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul.

I completed that Masters (and a second) and I’ve been back to Australia many times since my relocation to the U.S. in 1994 (most recently last March), but only ever to visit family and friends. That’s because I have made a second home here in Minnesota, complete with many wonderful friends (many of whom have accepted me as family) and many years of very meaningful work – church reform work, justice and peace work, civil rights work, meals-on-wheels work, political work, and, most recently, a vocation in palliative care chaplaincy. Looking back, I can discern how all these different kinds of involvement and work have brought me to the place I’m at today.

And that place has a depth dimension to it that’s grounded in a yearning to discern what’s next. For the past decade or so I’ve been feeling drawn back to Australia – to live and work there permanently. I just don’t know how exactly to make that transition.

What I do know is that the awareness of now having lived more years of my life in the U.S. than in Australia is quite sobering. It’s a state of mind and heart in which certain questions emerge: Is this what I want? Is this where I really want to be? And if I do return to Australia, where would I work? Could I continue the vocation I’m living out here and which I find so meaningful?

Lots of questions, to be sure.

I trust that I already have within me the answers to these questions. I just need to create the environment – the sacred time and space – for these answers to emerge.

Quieting, centering, aligning

To this end I’ve decided to cultivate a season of listening in my life. What that looks like on a practical level is the designating of time in my day within which I still my mind in quietness, center myself in loving awareness of the Divine Presence within and around me, and align myself with the flow of this presence. I really do trust that I need do nothing else; that the sacred, God, the Universe, the Living Light, the Beloved One – whatever name you want to call it – will do the rest.

My calling is to simply open myself to the flow of the sacred and allow this loving, transforming energy to guide my thoughts and actions. Intrinsic to this willingness on my part is my declaration to this Divine Presence that I am willing to see things differently, to change my perspective on anything and everything in order to be guided into a life of ever-deepening oneness with the flow of the sacred within and around me.

I feel that this type of willingness should be the constant living prayer of each and every one of us. Sure, different words can be used – traditional religious words, metaphysical words, whatever. But I trust that for all of us, the spiritual task is to be open to and welcoming of God in and through our lives, here and now. That being said, it seems that for me at this particular time in my life, the call to do this is especially powerful and especially clear.

One way I’m embodying this “season of listening” is by spending 5-10 minutes each morning in the Center of Reflection and Renewal at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. This is where I’m currently working. Yes, normally I’m based at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids, but I’ve switched places with the Palliative Care chaplain at Abbott for the winter, which works well for both of us. Both hospitals are within the Allina healthcare system, so such a switch is possible. In fact, you may recall I was at Abbott for part of last summer; and back in 2017-2018 I did my chaplain residency here.

Abbotts’s Center for Reflection and Renewal is a beautiful space to engage in the process of awakening mentioned above – quieting, centering, aligning – so as to attune myself to the “still small voice” within, the discerning voice within, and, in doing so, find grounding and balance in preparing for my work day as the hospital’s Palliative Care chaplain. It’s work which, as I’m sure you can imagine, has its share of demands and challenges.

But for at least five minutes or so every morning, I surrender to God all thoughts of such demands and challenges. I walk the Center’s labyrinth, visualize myself at one with God, and feel myself aligned with the flow of transforming love and light that is God.

And I trust that such openness on my part will and does make a difference as I leave the peace and quiet of the aptly named Center of Reflection and Renewal and go about my day.

I also trust that this morning practice will guide me in listening for – and to – the answers I seek in my life at this time.