Spirituality in the Workplace

Here's another reflection I put together (with the help of some of my friend Alison's blog posts) for the spiritual care department's weekly electronic publication. Thought you might enjoy the quotes.

Sharing Stories

"I find that one of the most important things we are called to do as peacemakers is to find a style of living. How do we live? ... We should try to find a style of life where we live peacefully, where we can find silence... talk must always come from the place of silence and not from a place of aggressiveness and power. ...

It is important to discover what it means to listen to others, to understand them, to understand how people function. It's not easy to see how another person functions. There is no point in just telling people what to do. We must discover how to enter into each other's story so that there is dialogue and mutual trust. That is a beginning. But it's still a long road and each of us has our own road on the journey to peace."

-Jean Vanier, Encountering the Other.

I stumbled across this quote on a friend’s blog the other day and have since found myself reflecting on how true these statements are to what I do here at St. Joe’s. These quotes speak to me about listening, and how when speaking comes out of listening and entering into the story of another person’s life relationship happens. When I sit at the bedside of a patient and allow them to tell me their story, their hopes, their fears, then I respond out of that place of having heard them, a connection happens. And the most exciting part about that experience for me is that even for just a moment, our stories… that of the patient and my own story… intersect and become one, and we each go our separate ways changed because of that encounter.