Conditioning/Listening

It takes conditioning and months of training for an athlete to be at the top of their game. It’s the same in horse racing. For each race that lasts a matter of minutes there are many countless hours spent in training and conditioning.

There’s a story told of a Kansas farmer on his first visit to New York City to see his cousin. It’s the middle of the day and the streets are buzzing with activity – crowds of people scurrying to lunch, sirens wailing, horns blaring and brakes screeching. In the midst of all this noise, the farmer turns to his cousin a native New Yorker and says, “Hold on. I hear a cricket.”

His cousin turns to him and says, “Are you kidding me? Even if there was a cricket here you wouldn’t be able to hear it over all this noise.”

The farmer stopped and was quiet for a moment and then began to walk to the corner where a shrub was struggling to grow in a cement planter. After turning over several leaves he found the cricket much to the surprise and flabbergasted city dweller. “What great ears you have,” he said.

"Not at all," the farmer replied. "Your ears are as good as mine. It’s a matter of what you’ve been conditioned to listen for. Here, I’ll show you." Whereupon, he pulled a handful of coins from his pocket and let them clink to the sidewalk. As if on signal, every head on the block turned. "You see," said the farmer, "you hear what you are tuned in to listen for."

After reading this, I started to question my conditioning when it came to prayer. Do I hear the Lord speaking to me, or I am I so busy babbling my needs and wants that I drown him out? I need to condition myself to sit still and listen. I need to clear all the clutter in the form of worries and fears that are on my mind and tune in to the God channel. There are times when my mind feels like New York City at mid day even when I’m in church listening to the homily. There are times when I can quiet my mind down and listen and there are times when the Lord asks, can you spend one hour with me and feel like I’ve only gone through the motions. Sometimes I wish that churches had a brain check area much like restaurants have coat and hat check areas. Wouldn’t it be nice to deposit all the unnecessary clutter of the brain and go in with a clean slate and be ready to absorb all that God is saying?