"Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him" (Luke 8:18)

Who doesn't love a good story? It's a treat to nestle into one of those stadium seats in the movie theatre with a bag of popcorn and let yourself be totally transported into another world, even for a few hours. A few stolen moments to curl up in a favorite chair or sit up late in the comfort of your bed with your Kindle or Nook, engrossed in a new novel or the latest biography, is a reward for many of us. I'm as guilty of these pleasures as the next person. So what's wrong with that?

When you think about it, this kind of consumption of stories is very private and personal, and we all need this time to ourselves, and probably shouldn't apologize for wanting to be entertained - to an extent. But there are other ways to engage with stories that have the potential to challenge and perhaps even change us, because they involve a communal interaction. I'm talking about stories that people tell each other about real things - where they are the characters, and their everyday lives the plot and the setting.

Of course we talk to each other. We e-mail, we leave voice messages, we 'post' on Facebook, we tweet, we text. But how often do we ask someone to really share a story, and then take the time to actually listen to it, without thinking about what we want to say next?

When we really listen to someone's story, we make them more human. It is a form of respect and a way to serve God. We are also changed because the story becomes a part of us. The great 20th century New Jersey poet and physician William Carlos Williams was inspired by the lives of his patients, finding the stories in their pathos and human suffering that became the material of his poems and prose. But he also learned how enriched he was by these stories, claiming that "if I've failed as a doctor ... please remember that I may also have passed a few times. It's being made uncomfortable by a story, and trying to put it out of your head...But you can't quite succeed...because you've been influenced, and the day may come when that influence wins you over."

I learned about Dr. Williams through my mother, who grew up in Rutherford and was his patient as a child, and later, as an adult, his friend. "Everyone loved him," she told me, "because he encouraged us to tell him not just what hurt, or how we were feeling, but what else was happening when we got sick - where we were, who was there, that kind of thing." She described his visits as "the best kind of attention," and said that she often saw his car leave the house and pull over to the curb up the street, where he wrote his notes and reflections about his patients in a notebook he kept on the front seat of his car for that purpose. Williams, the doctor, did not consider himself to be a particularly religious man - but in the way that he seized the opportunity that his profession afforded him to find a more human bond with his patients, I see God's work.

In the same way, a person who tells us a story that belongs to him becomes more human, becomes flesh. They become more alive, and we become more alive, too.

In his book The Healing Power of Stories, Daniel Taylor, a professor emeritus at Bethel College in Minnesota and author of many books on spirituality, says that "stories act by incarnation, giving flesh and life to what otherwise is detached and abstract. The story is itself an event and has the quality of a sacred action - it is more than a reflection." When I hear this I think of John 1:14: the word became flesh.

Whose stories should we listen to? We can deepen our roots with those we already cherish by giving them not just our time, but real attention - drawing them out to share a story. We honor them by asking, by 'hungry' listening, and find we know them better. And the person we know not at all - a stranger, who we chance upon in the course of our day, who might be invisible in the routines and rituals of their jobs or comings and goings - we humanize them and enrich our interaction in the act of listening.

In the same way that biblical stories instruct, inspire and connect us to God and his Word, we become part of another person's life (and they ours) by experiencing their story. As Taylor says, "community is formed only by shared stories - not by monologues."

As the great writer Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa) said: "To be a person is to have a story to tell."

Lord, help us to challenge ourselves to live your Word by making our stories - whether heard or told -more active, more intentional. We ask that you guide us to be 'hungry listeners' and remember that in our true attention to others, we are honoring your loving spirit. Amen.

Contributed by Susan
Monday March 23, 2015
Liturgical Year B: Week 17
Liturgical Color: Purple
Sunday Gospel reading: Lent 5
Fifth Sunday in Lent