Called to Deeper Truth

-

As  Dominicans we are always called to deeper truth.  I have the good fortune in the ministry I do to be in a learning mode.    Daily I am invited to practice nonviolent communication more practically and more genuinely.  The other day I got frustrated at our administrative assistant.  While I certainly expressed my feelings I did not pause to learn where he was coming from and what were his feelings or needs.  How to practice better communication in this instance?  Well, there is nothing like back-tracking to try to truly hear each other.

This kind of learning is its own preaching as well.  Phrases like deeper listening, pausing, being curious about where the other is and what are his/her feelings and needs.  These are all practice tools.

The ultimate goal?  Transformation:  individually, communally, and socially.  Through this practice I am slowly expanding my experience of empathy:  self-empathy (when I botch up a communication as described above) and empathy for the other (when I/we explore the shared longings we carry within us.)

This level of empathic engagement is often itself transformative, changing opposition into affection, defensiveness into openness, and opinionated assertiveness or withdrawal into shared inquiry and active co-creativity. These skills, more broadly practiced, would profoundly change our experience of conflict and our ability to use its energies to make life better instead of worse.

How are your learnings a preaching?  What is empathy teaching you?

K.C. Young, OP
Kirkland, WA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nuns can have nose rings? (and other frequently asked questions)

-
Image
One of my favorite things about being a young sister-in-formation is allowing people to ask me their burning (and sometimes silly) questions about religious life.   Questions like: Do nuns have jobs?   Can you still go dancing and swimming?   You mean you get to keep that nose ring? Becoming a sister right now is an interesting thing: religious life has changed drastically in the past fifty years, but many people’s stereotypes about it haven’t.   Many of these stereotypes seem superficial (ie- all nuns wear habits; nuns don’t dance) but they may reflect deeper misconceptions about religious life… like the idea that sisters are somehow more holy or less human than “normal” people.   For a long time, my own misconceptions kept me from really considering religious life. And so I enjoy the questions.   I love making people feel free to ask them, and I love surprising them with the answers.   After all, they aren’t really asking about my nose ring; they want to know about this way
Read more

Happiness and Joy in Religious Life?

-
Image
I never wanted to be a religious sister (nun) because I felt I would never be happy.     This calls me to reflect on what is happiness.     Some say that happiness is a feeling.     It is when you feel good and cheerful about something that happened or is happening in your life.     However, I think that true happiness comes from when you make others happy.     After I went out of my way to assist someone and they unexpectedly tell me how much my helping meant to them.     I experience an unexpected warm feeling inside.     True happiness I think is a sense of fulfilment you feel even if what you did was not acknowledged, yet you know that deep down inside you did and gave of your best to help someone without any conscious ulterior motive.     You did it because it was the right and necessary thing to do at the time. Everyone searches for happiness and many know that true happiness cannot be found in things, but in how we help others just because they need help.  Many sisters in religi
Read more

Where are my...(fill in the blank)?

-
Image
Okay, I’ve finally learned to put my car/home/office keys in the SAME place when I get home.  But I still haven’t learned to remember where I left my glasses or my latest crossword puzzle or the flyer about a concert I now think I missed or that needed phone number I jotted down on a piece of paper – and I have a LOT of pieces of paper sitting around.  Yes, I am one of those people.  But that litany of “forgets” got me thinking about the important things I forget about until I really need them – like prayer, quiet time, reading something challenging instead of easy, actually calling my elderly cousin instead of saying, “I should really call Ruth,” and never doing it, working through a situation instead of avoiding it.   I challenge myself this week – and you – to take action, one small action, to overcome this very human weakness of losing, forgetting, neglecting something that we know is really important.  Is this easy?  Is there a shortcut I can take?  I’m afraid not.  But if we trul
Read more