Tag: Listening

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Holy Spirit Listening

Really Hearing

I bet you can hear the lapping of those waves. It is the tidal pool at Cellardyke and if you look really really hard there is a tiny speck in that pool which is my husband braving the waters!!! Photographed by myself June 2025

5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken

Acts 2:5-6

Ok so I know the chapter starts with saying the disciples spoke in different tongues but it is this piece about each person hearing that struck me. Although we don’t actually know what the disciples were saying in these different tongues because the people then say “what does this mean?” And Peter stands up and does his spiel.

What struck me was how often people, including myself, think we’ve heard something, let it run through our own perceptions, our own filters, and then presume we know what the person meant. It seems very rare that someone will says “what does that mean?”/“what do you mean by that?” because we’ve already decided we know. It is why couples fight because both presume they know what the other is really saying. It is a reason why nations fight – because they cannot really hear the peace talks, why people walk out of meetings or get upset in them, because we don’t really listen.

It is said that the majority of the time, when in conversation, what we are doing is waiting for an opportunity to step in and tell our story, even if it is to empathise, we are still half hearing and waiting to get our bit in.

Though for some people answering that question, “what do you mean by that?”, can be a hard one to answer because that involves us listening to our hearts and trying to understand why we say what we really mean by what we’ve said. Often, I think, we say things that we think will please others, that we’ve heard other people use, that we think we should say, rather than before we speak asking of ourselves “what do I really mean by that?”

So something happened, I think, when the Holy Spirit fell in Jerusalem at Pentecost, something that caused both the disciples to speak deeply and for people to hear deeply, caused people to stop talking and to fully listen, be brave enough to know they didn’t understand and to want to know more.

Yes there were those who said “they’re drunk” but I think those were the ones that didn’t hear properly, weren’t touched by that desire to really listen but had already made their presumptions.

Maybe we could all do with a dose though of that Holy Spirit power that would make us only speak what needs to be hear, listen fully and be willing to ask what someone really means rather than jump to conclusions.

Categories
jealousy lineage

Lineage

Binchester August 2024 photographed by myself

[expansion of thoughts from over the summer]

When I was at my friend’s helping to declutter I was struck by jealousy. Jealous of their lineage.

As we went through the loft they were refinding clothes from the past. Not just their old wedding clothes but their parent’s wedding clothes. In one box was the birthing gown worn by my friend’s grandmother and mother. Seven children of two different generations had been born under this gown. But it wasn’t just that. My friend was going to gather her daughters and granddaughters and they were going to talk through who would inherit these. It made me think how one day this birthing gown would be living 5 generations on from the original owner!!! Wow!! Now that is lineage.

They are also genuinely close to each other. When it was my friend’s 75th birthday party you could feel the closeness of the 4 generations. [They are great grandparents now] It is a closeness that they can all open out to others too which is great. What they have is special.

For myself my family are a bit dysfunctional. The only grandparent I ever know was my Nan and she had a major stroke when I was about six and never spoke again properly. I do have some photos from her but as my mum, who was only in her late 20s when my Nan had her stroke says, she had not got to wanting to ask her many of the things she wishes she had. My parents divorced when I was 18 and my dad died without me knowing until 10 days later. So as you can see we don’t go back far. My children are in their 30s and there are no grandchildren on the way, which I am fine with as that is their choice. We’ve never done the family parties like my friends.

I was struggling this when The Write Club that meets on line at 8am on a Wednesday put forward our first commissioning; to write about our “lineage”, meaning as much what you have read as what your family influences were. I refused to let the jealous and a bit self-pitying take over and so allowed my pen to hover over my journal and see what happened.

Well …. I was amazed at the things that came from it, of remembering older people who had passed through my life that have influenced my reading, my writing, and my ways of thinking. People from beyond the constraints of blood ties, many of whom have died, who have opened my eyes and my mind to so many different ways of thinking and doing things. It is amazing.

Would these people have entered my life if I had a strong, large, close-knit family? That I will never know. But this writing has taken me from focusing of what I didn’t have to wayyyyy beyond that.

Once we move beyond what we don’t have our eyes are opened to the well of ideas, to the stories that are us, that come each time we truly listen to our lives.

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Listen to my heart serendipity

Serendipity

Tryfan taken from near Llyn Ogwen Sunday 28th April 2024 by myself

I know I said yesterday’s was the last post until after my holiday but I really wanted to tell you about what happened yesterday afternoon. To me it felt like the serendipitous moments that happen when you follow your heart.

I woke up feeling like, after I walked the greyhound mid morning, that I wanted to go to see if I could buy some new trainers. My heart also said that I should treat myself to lunch at a cafe I like. So after walking Mikey the greyhound Renly and I set off in the car. We had lunch then I dragged him round Sport Direct looking at trainers and walking boots. But I couldn’t find any I liked. So I put all the boxes down, said sorry to the shop assistant and left the shop. Outside were a group of women that I had to walk round.

One of them squealed “Mum look at that cute dog” about my Renly. She must have been in her mid-twenties 🙂 The younger women were asking about the dog and then their Mum said “It’s you. You’re the writer.”

Her and I had met at that well-being day I’d done at the end of February. She’d done the cooking for the event. She had said she wanted to come to one of my writing workshops sometime.

As we chatted it turned out things had been tough with her grown-up children and she hadn’t had the headspace to get in touch. This time I was bold enough to take her email address. This way she can come as and when she feels like it.

So I came out of the shop feeling despondent because I driven 12 miles and not bought anything but then I meet this lovely lady and also get a confidence boost; one that she recognised me; and two that she praised me to her daughters.

I got in the car thanking God and my heart for leading me there. I also thanked myself for the work I have been doing via QEC and other things to clear my heart so I can hear it clearly. Now I trust my heart even when it makes no sense.

Categories
Listening Still

Relearning!

made by https://www.sethceramics.co.uk/

I’m sure I’m not the only human being who is a bit thick at times. Yes I talk about listening with my heart but as it says somewhere in the bible “The heart is fickle” or something like that. Well I’m not sure about you but my heart can get lost in its own stuff at times and it takes a few things to nudge it out again. And the nudges came in shed loads over the weekend.

As you know I’ve got this part time job 4 afternoons a week. It is great. It is right. It also helps that the rotas are not confirmed until the Friday of the previous week so I cannot get into planning because I don’t know when I’ll get that day off. The last couple of weeks it has been a Wednesday but the couple of weeks previous it was a Friday and who knows what for next week. So I have to be patient and wait.

I said to someone when I got this job that it was good because it meant I would have to say No to things but instead I have been filling up those mornings with things. Made all the more sneaky in that they are great things, all of which felt right. But what all these great things did was not only did they stopped me writing they also stopped me from pondering, from thinking, from knowing how I felt.

I managed to justify it all by saying to myself that these were the right things to do. In fact a couple of them were things I had been hoping to do for years. Why is it sometimes those things you had set your heart on are not what you should be doing? At least not at this moment in time because they get in the way of the bigger thing.

The bigger thing in my writing. Not just these blogs but the other projects that need peculating time. But not just that. I have also learned that I need, like we all do really, to have time to feel my feelings and to really know my heart.

It is always interesting how taking time out to know ourselves and be the best version of ourselves is so overlooked!

So on Saturday I’m at a writing workshop and am saying to one of the group that I haven’t written much and she almost gives me reassurance that this is ok because we are all busy. My heart jumped. Busy is a key word and so I tucked it away.

Then on Sunday we went to a ceramics show. Firstly I chatted to a woman who now makes huge slab bird baths and she told me her story; of how she had once been a renowned collectable potter but had felt a call to something else and she’d had to spend time pondering until she found out how all her things connected. Again I felt that heart bump and had to stop and write down the key things that she said

Follow your interests. It is your interests that will take you where you should go. But take time out to find what they really are. It is about being brave enough to take time out.

Then I came across a lady who made the Caretaker bird in the photograph. Some of the info about these birds says how they came out in lockdown but now have disappeared. This bird is about resting, being, drinking tea, listening. I could not leave it behind. I was going to keep it in my study but it now sits on the hall table so I see it as I come and go. And it reminds me to take things slower, to listen, to drink tea, to be rather than do, to have time to look around, to not have to fill my day, my diary, with stuff.

I sat on the grass, wrote a bit on the backs of the business cards I’d picked up and listened to God/The Universe as my husband continued round talking to potters. I realised again I had filled my time so I did not have to listen to my emotions. They had been telling me for a while to give up a voluntary position but I had been ignoring it because I really wanted to do this. But I had to listen when I was getting bombarded on all sides to slow down.

So I cancelled something that only took up 2 mornings of my week but actually took up a lot of my headspace. Once I had made that decision emotions around a family thing came flooding in. All I could say was it was like slit being disturb on the river bed. Now if I hadn’t stopped this thing I think the slit would have stayed put. I think that’s why we keep busy. To stop the slit being disturbed. But the silt isn’t good. It stops the river of me from flowing freely.

So I’ve put in place some QEC time and also been able to spend the last 2 mornings pondering and being. I have felt such peace and not having to fit things in around other stuff. Pondering isn’t something you can fit in anyway. Neither is listening to your heart.

Yes we do all have things we have to do but too often we fill our days up with things we think we ought to do – to look good, to be busy, to feel we belong, etc. Stopping does hurt for a bit but it is better to know and to feel truly than to keep blundering through and taking one’s unhealed bits forward into something new.

I know I’ll falter at this. I know I’ll fill time up again. But I am hoping Beaty, the Caretaker bird on my hall table will keep reminding me of my true purpose.

Categories
Listen to my heart logcial

The System is Broken

Taken from a private FB group I’m part, which is where the idea for this and the previous 2 blog post emerged from

I was hoping to say this post is, a sort of conclusion, a sort of answer if we are brave enough to do it, to the issues in the previous two posts, but as it has progressed I realise there has to be at least one more post.

One of the major reasons we finish up in jobs we’re not happy in, whether high paid or low paid, going too often for the miserable but respectable position is because we listen too often to the voices of others, even if that is not conscious. We want to fit in so we go for something that will “use our brains”, make our parents happy, earn us “enough” money which will lead to a “nice” house, lots of leisure time during which we will too often continue the patter of doing things that are subconsciously put on us by external voices. Yet in all this we are being logical. We are looking at things with logical eyes. We are not listening calmly and quietly to our hearts. In fact we shut our hearts out and then wonder why we see increases in depression, anxiety, and various other things.

Interestingly the person I mentioned in the 1st of these three posts has quit the job that was making her miserable, is now doing a selection of other jobs, is happy and is writing again.

Interestingly for myself I’ve just taken on 2 part time jobs, which I felt in my heart were the right things to do. I am back to being as busy as I was before lockdown and yet I am finding that I feel more creative, more able to write within the spaces that there are in my day. Following my heart even though it actually looks a bit full on and illogical has released me to write more than when I was trying to do things that seemed right.

In the last post the question was posed firstly by Gus Seth, then by myself, of how do we over come greed, selfishness and apathy and bring about a spiritual and cultural transformation.

The answer I think is so obvious – let go of trying to figure out things logically. Stop trying to work out how to change the system. Instead find those things that block us from listening to our hearts, be healed/set free of them and just listen. Then I believe we would do the jobs we liked, want to do the things that were needed to keep this world clean and healthy. We would care more for the planet, and each other, because we would be hearing it more. But this takes time

As a Christian I love hanging out with God. But too often in too many denominations to fit in you do have to let go of the magical mystery of God and go with your logical mind to fit in. It is not that you give up your intelligence to truly meet with God but you do have to let go of your logic to really enter into that mystery. As God says in Ezekiel,

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26

This must be on my mind because I did a post about this only last year which you can read here. Following on from that I think that when one has a heart of stone it is when one is using logic and working out what fit right, what will work properly. But we have to let God/The Universe/our therapy move us from the logical to the vulnerable heart, the fleshy heart, the heart that often doesn’t do the things society expects but in the end changes things by the energy that they release.

I also think this is why people do not rush to go to churches. They do not need another logical, rule based, fitting in with others system. They need a place where they can be free to be their genuine selves, free to fly, free to make mistakes and be picked up after. I could rant away about this for ages, but …

I also think that this freedom from logic and being able to let go of the blockages that hold us back from hearing our hearts is not just for those who meet God/Jesus, but is open to everyone. I also think that those who go to church often have not worked on freeing those blockages.

With all of this there is no logical system that will work, whether in prayer or in anything. There is a hanging out, a trusting, a deep listening, and then a bravery to go outwards into whatever comes next.

Are we willing though to listen to our hearts and not our egos?

Categories
respect unconditional love

What Does It Look Like To You?

Newborough Beach Boxing Day 2022 taken by myself

Who has not looked at clouds and seen shapes, dragons, spaceships, incoming rain, promises of sunshine? The worst thing is when someone says “no that’s not right”. It is your imagination seeing the things. You know they are just clouds but are enjoying what you are picture.

I was thinking about both Respect and Unconditional Love and thinking they can look different to each one of us. I don’t think there is a one size fits all of respect or unconditional love.

I was walking with someone this morning who is struggling with something and I felt I had got the handle on it, but just as I was going to say my bit she said how hurt she’d been about people telling her why they thought she was dealing with this. I closed my mouth and listened to her. I did not say these friends of hers were wrong. I did not say they were right. I did listen and say that her feelings were her feelings. I gave her the respect she needed at that moment in time. Perhaps I could say I did not feel respected because I didn’t have my rant but actually that would not have been kind and helpful to her.

Perhaps Respect and Unconditional Love come when we lay aside our needs and wants and listen to the other person. Perhaps if we believed we were loved unconditionally by God, by the Universe, by something more than us, then we could let go of our needs and allow others to feel respect, to feel really loved.

How will this work with those who are striking? Who are asking for more money but who say they feel their jobs are not being respected, are not the caring jobs they signed up for? Money is not the answer if they are still expected to work in the conditions they are working in. Those in government, those in management, those with power, need to bend a bit, show these people they are important to the workings of this land.

I wonder if those in power, in government, in management, also do not feel respects, do not feel unconditionally love. How often does the media run down the government? With the latest words for the Prime Minister all that followed was complaints and criticisms. How would we all have felt if we put forward an idea and got it slated? But then those lower down do not feel respected.

So how do we change? One of the things that strikes me with the Lord’s Prayer – which I don’t think was meant to be read parrot fashion but was a serious of ideas we should be looking at – in “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” that this means us. You and me. For that to happen we need to be giving respect, giving unconditional love, listening and respecting the person we are with at the time, caring for our planet, our world. Caring firstly for those nearest to us.

If each of us showed respect to the person we met and then they showed respect to the next person they met and so and so forth, but the end of the day so many people would feel better about themselves, and I think towards each other. I don’t think it is about “making people Christians” but is about showing unconditional love, showing respect.

You know Jesus never told anyone to convert. He did tell them to change their lifestyles but he also showed them respect, unconditional love, and told them that the Kingdom of God, that true place of peace and deep joy, was nearer than they thought, was actually deep inside of them, but sometimes they just needed to let it out. And letting it out comes, I think, knowing our self-worth comes from within not without, that we are loved by something so much bigger than ourselves and that we have nothing to lose by being nice to others.

So today I will try to believe I am loved and respect and pass that on to others. That I really do not have anything to lose by being kind.

Categories
enough Listen to my heart

Enough And No Further

This is just a good excuse to put a photo of my friend Tessa on my blog post. She has been very ill and since before lockdown wasn’t able to get to the sea side. She lives about 50 miles inland and it was all too much for her. Well she has since been diagnoised and getting treatment so my daughter and I took her on the train to her nearest seaside just to show her she could do it. This was the place on our walk on beach where she said “that’s enough. I’d like to turn round now.” So enough and no more. [Picture was taken about 11.30am but it was a dark old day!]

Today I was reading a book about women in history. I had been struggling along with it and its many references to Mother Goddess. Not because I believe God is male but more because it was being placed as a fact. I then reached a line which quoted John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God”. It went on to say that this was a lie and that history had invent him.

Now as I’m sure I’ve mentioned in previous blogs I think we’ve missed something amazing by giving God a gender and that when the Bible says about how God made man and women in God’s image then God must be male and female, all genders and none. So I’ve got no issues with the argument that God isn’t a “he” but I do have issues with then the creator god being a “she” as though that makes it alright.

But the for me what has made me stop is that sometimes we all have to say “enough and no more”. It is not that I want to make this author believe that God is male but also I find that I reach a point in reading where I had to say this is enough for me and put the book down. I come across this sometimes in historic books or programs, where I feel that author or presenter has gone too far off piste and I am not ready to go with them.

My son used to ski. My husband went out to join him once. My son skis off piste. My husband doesn’t. My husband had to go his way and let my son go his own. Both within their comfort zones so to speak.

So it isn’t that I am not open minded. I hope that I am. But sometimes it gets to a point where I am not ready to go as far as the author or presenter and you know that is ok. So I would not say this author is wrong, but I would say, like with my friend and the walk on the beach, that this was enough and I’d like to go back now.

I was reading some stuff about listening to your heart and going with your gut feelings and how too often we don’t do that. Well for me my heart says that is enough and so I will listen to it. Something I am learning more and more to do.

Categories
presumption Viewpoint

Not Everyone Views The World As I Do

Photograph taken whilst on a walk with husband and mother-in-law taken by myself, Diane Woodrow
Lambs, Lady’s Walk, Montacute April 2022. Taken by myself

I was really surprised yesterday at the writing group I was running that the two ladies who were there had never picked wild garlic and so never cooked with it. I then told a dog walking friend this and she had also never picked and eaten wild garlic. Her and I are now off to do that later this week. But it got me thinking of how many things I take for granted and think everyone can do them.

But it also clouds ones view of things. I know I would not be great at helping people who struggle with money because I have always been great at budgeting and of making money stretch. I am not 100% sure how I do it but I just do. So for someone to say they just cannot budget would leave me confused. But also I cannot map read. No matter how many times my husband shows me how to do it, and he is patient, I just can’t seem to get my head round it. I still am amazed that the sea is at the top of the map here. We live of the North Wales coast so for many of you that will be obvious but to me – Nope!

Too often when we talk about things, whether it is how we budget, what we eat, or try to share our faith, we come from the place of what we know. So for instance faith-wise we know what we know about God – and that can be different for each person – but we talk about it from what we have experienced, how it manifests to us, and then get frustrated with others from that point. This with the ladies at my writing group has helped me to see this. They are both over 60 and to me everyone has picked garlic.

With the Christian youth group I’m privileged to co-run I have started to ask the young people questions based on the liturgies and phrases they use about God, about their faith, about the out-workings of it all. When you say “I believe in God the Father” what do you mean by that? Because I am a writer I get them to write it down. Also I think there is space to say things in writing that you might not say out loud.

So for me from these ladies and that they had made it past 60 having never picked or cooked with wild garlic I am hopefully learning that my experiences of the world are mine and have shaped how I do and see things but not everyone has experienced, done or see what I have or in the same way I have. So instead of presuming I will start asking and wondering and learning and finding out.

Perhaps if we all started listening, learning and asking questions rather than presuming and going our way then there would be less fear, less anxiety and less fighting and wars?

Categories
Bodies Listening

Our Amazing Bodies

Photograph of the highest point on the walk I went on testing my endurance. Taken by Diane Woodrow
Above Abergwyngregan taken by myself 22nd March 2022

I am always amazed at my body when I listen to it. At the point when this photo was taken my heart was pumping and my breath was ragged. But that is to be expected.

I had chosen this path on a whim, though had had a bit of a look at the map the day beforehand, and I had walked the opposite way with my husband many years ago. But as I was going down the path from this point I noticed the pylons and I was very high above them. I could see the popular path to the waterfalls way below me but things seemed all wrong. So I sat down, got out my phone and tried to work out where I was. I couldn’t get a good signal and started to panic. I was on the top of this mountain surrounded by sheep and thought the path I was on could be wrong. My heart started racing and my stomach cramped and then my legs started to ache. I was at a point where I could convince myself that I could not go on. So I remembered my QEC work, got my autonomic nervous system [ANS] away from fight/flight mode, listened to my heart, put my phone away and continued along the path. This was about 45 minutes into my walk. The path curved left in a while and I went under the pylons and along to the waterfalls and back to my car.. I had been on the right path all along.

But what surprised me most of all was that as soon as I got my ANS calmed and started walking again my legs stopped aching and I did the next 75 minutes of my walk with not an ache. The pain in my legs was due to my fears. Interestingly my sister-in-law says she knows when she is nearing the end of a walk, no matter how long, because her legs start to ache. I know it is often seen as a form of encouragement to say “nearly there” but maybe that makes our bodies start to ache thinking we are nearly there.

I remember years ago when some famous politician’s car was blown up in the tunnel under the Houses of Parliament. One thing he said after was that even though he could not feel his legs he believed that no major blood vessels had been damaged and that he would survive. He said he had seen many young men on the battle field die because they had believed the injuries were fatal when they weren’t. Ok so different to my aching legs from fear that I was on the wrong path but also similar.

Another interesting thing with my body is that from Thursday or Friday I felt short of breath and it stayed with me till Monday. I even did a covid test to check I was negative. As you know from the My Sister post it was 10 years ago that my sister died. Well also 10 years ago a really close friend committed suicide. Eight years ago this same time period my son broke his collar bone playing rugby. Six years ago the same weekend my daughter had a major break up with a boyfriend and I helped her move from London to Cardiff. And then of course 2 years ago this self same time we went into lockdown. It was only when I was catching my breath at the top of yesterday’s climb that I realised over that whole period of last weekend I was holding my breath waiting for something bad to happen. Nothing did so now I can breath again. Again fascinating how my body remembered those incidents and was preparing itself.

I do think too often we are too busy and don’t listen to our bodies. Or we have so many other things piled around us that our heads are making too much noise to be able to really listen. Listening to our bodies takes time. Listening to our bodies means slowing down. Listening to our bodies takes understanding. Listening to our bodies means not judging them. Listening to our bodies means having a sense of awareness. It also means not being afraid to look back and ask “what happened then?”

I know this is a question I keep asking but – are we willing to slow down and really listen? to ourselves and also to the world around us?

Categories
heart Viewpoint

How We View Things

photograph by Diane Woodrow
Beauty or showing off?

With the way the media has been portraying things recently I have been pondering how we view things. For example take birds. We marvel at eagles, we use cuckoos as a herald for spring, and we are superstitious about magpies. Yet each of the birds kills the chicks of other birds but I have only ever heard magpies be condemned for doing it in a big way.

So now we look at one side of a conflict/war/atrocity as a hero and the other side as evil. It can even switch sides if something happens to do that viewpoint. For instance England fought against France for hundreds of years and yet in the First World War many British men died fighting with the French. And then for a brief period France, Germany and Britain were all in the EU together.

I wonder what makes us view things in a certain way?

Yesterday I got upset with someone I was having coffee with. When I took time out to examine the why of how I felt I realised she reminded me of something in my past and it was that wound I was reacting to. I’ve had similar things with projects that come to an end. It hurts more than just a freelancer being insecure about where the next job comes from. But again if I slow down and listen to my heart I realise where that hurt comes from.

So I wonder as we go into the good guy/bad guy, good thing/bad thing way of labeling things we need to slow down, check with our hearts and ask ourselves why we are doing this. Is it to do with the present situation we are in or is it to do with some greater hurt or fear?

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll do a blog on my thoughts on why the Bible tells of man eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather the tree of knowledge because I think this explains something.

So next time you think about labeling something or someone good or bad slow down, listen deeply to your heart – that bit of your heart that doesn’t get heard too often, and see if you can find the real reason. Then give your heart a hug and be kind to yourself for over reacting, as I did yesterday.