Have you given loving listening a try?

We're often eager to speak and express ourselves....

Our opinions, our views of the world, our preferences and ideas.

I get it, and I’m the first one to raise my hand as one who often has so much say and to share. But as I began this year, I realized that it is when I listen carefully, deeply, honestly and attentively to the one before me, is when real magic may happen. This can look like a deeper connection, the opening of a luminous space that is so rarely found in this busy, noisy world. It can look like a deepening of a bound, and always, a heart opening.

It can also be a realization that the other has different needs and wants that my own. And that that is ok. That this is more than acceptable and that it invites honouring the other as much I dream of being honoured and respected.

So this year, I started the year as I usually do in the past years … inside my heart, my mind and my soul. My inspiration came as I was painting a white rose, where beams of light caressed each petal.

And the inspiring words that opened up this fresh, new and intense year were words embedded with wisdom, love and light. They came straight out of a holly book, which speaks about love in a way that I can only dream of living, sharing and experiencing in this lifetime. This message carries both ancient wisdom and contemporary freshness simultaneously. And it says the following:

^‘‘ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’’ - 1 Corinthians 13 4 : 13.

There’s not a day that passes by that I don’t pray that we all may embody this kind of love and witness its power of transformation for us, all.

Until the next time,

I wish you blessed miracles, of all kinds.