Listening

Some people are always complaining. Every time you talk to them you get an organ recital. It begins with their liver, then it moves onto their stomach, plantar warts, dandruff. Who knew there were so many organs? You know what holiness is? Listening to all of that as if you had never heard it before. Holiness is listening to the joke your've heard twenty-five times and laughing at the punch line for the twenty-sixth time, while keeping your mouth shut. Holiness is putting up with the gripes of others with tenderness. All of that is holiness. ~ Mother M. Angelica

Listening with love means listening with compassion and sincerity; it means listening without interrupting or zoning out. It means listening without trying to solve the problem. Many times problems disappear into the thin air as soon as they are listened to. ~ Deacon Bill Steltemeier