Episode Transcript
0:00
I was focused on my computer, as I was replying to an email,
0:04
and our parish secretary came in the office and asked a question.
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From my peripheral view, I knew she was there,
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and then I looked at her,
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and I probably had a blank look on my face.
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Because I realised I wasn’t listening to her.
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You probably have experienced something similar where you were unable to
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properly respond to someone because you were
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preoccupied with someone else or something else.
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There’s a lot of things that distract us nowadays.
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According to some studies,
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the average attention span now of a human adult
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is only 8.25 seconds.
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Which mirrors the length of time
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a person spends on a web page
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before looking at another one.
0:49
Do you know that the Jewish people
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recite a few of the lines from our First Reading regularly, like
0:55
twice or three times a day?
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I’m referring to the Shema!
1:00
“Hear, O Israel!”
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I think there’s wisdom in repetition
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and being reminded constantly about something so important,
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and in this case,
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their identity as belonging to the One God.
1:13
For us Catholics,
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there is something that we also do repeatedly.
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It’s something that engages our hands,
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our speech and our listening.
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We say something out loud
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and using our hands make the sign of the cross.
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And it's a wonderful reminder of our identity in Christ.
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It’s the pattern left to us by Christ on how we ought to relate with our neighbours.
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By making the sign of the Cross,
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may it shape or mold
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us into Christ’s image on the cross.
1:48
Attentive listening is really a sort of
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dying to oneself, how so?
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Because by truly listening,
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we risk the possibility of being changed by what we hear.
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After I stared blankly at our parish secretary, I said,
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“Oh sorry I wasn’t listening”.
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I then gave my attention to her.
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But first, I had to let go of what I was doing,
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and in a small way it was a kind of self-emptying,
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and only then was there space, here,
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and here, for me to ask,
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“you were saying?”
