Listening Growth Groups
Hungry Souls has been conducting small (3-4 people) listening growth groups for over two years. We are in a hiatus for the summer and will begin groups again next February 2007. The following description may help you understand what it is we do:
In his amazing book, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life, Parker Palmer talks about the paradox of being alone together, of being present to one another as a community of solitudes...
"Those phrases sound like contradictions because we think of solitude and community as either-or. But solitude and community, rightly understood, go together as both-and. To understand true self--which knows who we are in our inwardness and whose we are in the larger world--we need both the interior intimacy that comes with solitude and the otherness that comes with community."
Since February 2005 about twenty of us have journeyed together in small growth groups to learn about the practice of listening prayer. Meeting several hours once a month, we have begun to discover the amazing power that exists in listening to one another while exercising prayerful silence as a primary key to unlocking mutual self-understanding. We gather, go into silent listening prayer, one person shares, the others keep praying and listening. When the person who has been sharing is done, we go again into silence, which is only broken when that person thinks of something else that needs to be spoken or gives permission for the group to respond. And we do respond, but only with questions. Then we go back into prayer-filled silence and this is broken after a few minutes when the next person begins the cycle again.
One woman wrote, "I just wanted to let you know that I want to continue coming on Thursdays and meeting with a group. It has changed my life. I have experienced the healing powers of God with my relationship with my parents and others. Meeting for two hours once a month is so healing for me." There is something powerful in being heard, in being really listened to, and in being understood. Few of us have enough people in our lives who really want to hear us tell them who we think we are, and what we think we are becoming. There is something even more powerful when a handful of other people give us their undivided attention, when they receive what we say, don't lecture or try to fix us, and when the silence of listening is activated by the Holy Spirit and prayer.
"I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place."
—Rufus Jones
Hungry Souls is creating a set of white papers that describe more fully the process that we have developed, and what we have learned in these last two years. If you are interested in receiving a set to start your own listening growth group, please contact us at .
