Holy Listening Quotes

“Lighten up" (don't) turn prayer into a work but listen for God and let oneself be surprised. Overly rigid adherence to a spiritual direction built around formal liturgical adherence and highly structured prayer time can work against the sanctification of the ordinary. Christ is effectively imprisoned, to be visited at stated times and otherwise ignored".”
― Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction

“Often what we call “play” is competitive or compulsive, because the aesthetic dimension of true play, its holy uselessness, goes against our grain.”
― Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction

“Dear God, help me pay attention! Dear God, help me keep my mouth shut! Dear God, let me put myself out of the way! Dear God, let me be wholly present to this person, your child!”
― Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction

“While I haven’t yet reached this state of detachment, I have spent too long with the day-to-day realities of mothering to be sentimental about it. If I am now perceived as a motherly person, I would prefer to be seen as desert amma rather than a Hallmark mommy. Most important, for good or ill, I know that my own experience in mother colors the way in which I do spiritual direction. And lest it sound as if I am excluding a large segment of the population, Meister Eckhart reminds us that we can all be mothers. While the experience of bearing nurturing a child is unique, maternal ways of being are available to all of us, men and women.”
― Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction

“the words from Aelred: “Here we are, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst.”
― Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction

“We are hungry, and we don’t know for what. We want something, but we can’t name it. The parish is taking good care of us, nourishing us with word and sacrament, just as the hospital made sure that Mrs. G was fed, nursed, and medicated. But we want something else, something more: we want to be touched, we want to be known as children of God.”
― Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction

“The spiritual director has the double task of holding up the demands of absolute responsibility and the promise of absolute forgiveness.”
― Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction