Still Listening

The Monastery of the Heart

I am presently flying over the Andes on the way to Panama City, listening to Jacob Collier’s powerful song “Witness Me,” having just finished a two-week service trip to Bolivia with my team from Weston Park. We taught ESL in a school built over a garbage dump outside of Cochabamba, ran children’s programs at the Casa Amistad (for kids whose parents are in prison and need care throughout the day), and interacted and served with a friend’s church which focuses on Brazilian medical students studying at Universidad Mayor de San Simon.

The experience once again underlined the truth that we don’t all see life through the same lens. Bolivian Andean culture is quite different from the city streets of Toronto and particularly the urban needs of the towers of Weston. The continents are different. The night sky is different. The full moon is different. The languages are different. The food is different. The customs are different.

I was impressed with this truth while reading Joan Chittister’s book El Monasterio Del Corazon (“The Monastery of the Heart”) where she notes:

No todos oimos los mismos tonos con el mismo volumen.

No vemos las mismas visiones en los mismos colores.

Ni buscamos los mismos bienes de la vida del mismo modo.

Her Spanish text roughly translates as, “We do not hear the same tones with the same volume. Neither do we see the same visions with the same colours. And we do not look for the same things in the same way.”

I think we can all agree that her observation rings true. Yet we frequently work hard at restraining the divergent positions of others. Restricting their world views. And reducing the broad horizons that people hold and we feel are incorrect. We do it in our politics. Our schools. Our institutions. And our churches. The truth is we feel more comfortable when we all think and do the same thing. Nuanced belief systems are ridiculed. Bare-bone simplicity is applauded.

When we step back and look at the incredible diversity that nature presents, it doesn’t look like God mirrors our approach. He likes to mix it up! Copiousness is the song that creation sings! And the Heart of Life rejoices in all of the serendipitous surprises.

We need to ask, Can we come to a place where differentiation is seen as a blessing and not an enemy? Can we rejoice with our Creative God in the givenness that “we do not hear all the same tones with the same volume?” and that “we do not see all the same visions with the same colours?” If, as Chittister suggests, we are ever going to experience the stillness and peace of “the monastery of the heart” then we must learn the lesson that “differences” are not to be feared but to be embraced. Indeed, they are productive pathways for fruitful and long-lasting spiritual growth.