Transcript of Abbot Clement's Talk on Monday, June 23, 2003
Workshop Reflection - Scotomes and Levels of Listening
One of the strong points of our workshop was the word Ascotoma@, which is the Greek for blindness. It was impressive also because Steve made us look at a sentence or two and count Af=s@ and we found out that even on that level we are blind.
It is clear in the gospels that blindness is one of our defects. We presented another idea that kind of ties in with our blindness. We talked about five ways of listening, which also included three and a half ways of unlistening. The first one was that we ignore. This is not simply that I=m unaware, this means that in a certain way I have already become selective. The second one was pretense. You=re on the phone and you want to do something. You=re listening but you=re really wishing that they would end the conversation, and you could get on with what you want to do so you pretend to listen. You say, AUh ha, maybe.@ You answer but you=re really not there. The third way of listening was selection. We=re selective in our hearing. I remember listening to some lectures and when I came across certain points that I already knew I said, AWell, I know that@ and skip it. I really didn=t listen to the new angle that may have been presented on those points. In the fourth way of listening, we are attentive. We=re there and we=re present, but we hear from our own position. We haven=t really heard the other. That=s the fifth way of listening, called empathic listening, which is full listening. Weall need to work towards empathic listening in our relationships.
This is key for us because we claim to seek God; and therefore we claim to relate to God twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. How do we really do it? It=s easy for us to ignore God much more then we want to admit. God can=t possibly come to me through this brother or this person at the door, but He=s there. We turn to the gospel. It=s even worse. In John Chapter 9, after healing the blind man, Jesus says that he came into the world for judgement so that the blind may see and that those who claim to see will be blind. The Pharisees heard Jesus, the lawyers actually, and they said, AAre we blind too?@ Jesus said, ABecause you say Awe see@ your sins are not forgiven.@
In other words, they were convinced that they were right. They could not see that they were blind. How are we blind? We=re blind in the sense that we don=t always respond to the calls of grace properly. If we know it, then our blindness is in good position to be healed because we can come to the Lord and acknowledge it. If we are aware of our spiritual poverty, even though we=re blind and don=t know things, we are in a disposition to come to the Lord and to be touched because we really are in the disposition of poverty of spirit.
This particular element that was presented in the workshop is probably one of the most rich points for our continued reflection and work. Perhaps the most practical way to approach this is to ask the Lord for the grace to show me my blindness. The Lord himself evokes faith in us. Faith means more than believing a teaching, a message, a word. It means coming to meet the Lord and then going out of myself in surrender to the Lord. So I move from myself to Him. Since this is a question of grace, and it is a question of God=s work in us, then it=s very important on the practical level to pray to the Holy Spirit to grant us the grace to be more deeply converted.