Holy Cards

I’ve been looking over an old book of mine, Nonviolent Communication, a Language of Life, which is about how to listen and respond to people without offending them. The big problem with reading this book is the awareness it brings of how important it is to the health of body, mind and spirit to be heard fully and completely and to grant others the same gift – and how rarely that actually happens . . .

Most of us, when we hear a person’s lamentations, we want to dole out advice and solutions like pellets from a shotgun – Shut up, already! we seem to be saying.  That’s violent, according to this book.  Most often, people are seeking empathy and genuine understanding, not advice.  The book states that one of the best things a listener can do is to paraphrase or summarize what the other person has just said – that shows you heard them.

That’s one thing my mother could do well, listen – and on this third anniversary of her death I feel gratitude that I had such an experience as a teenager and beyond – one person who could listen well and not give advice.  I think I heard her say once that she wasn’t smart enough to come up with solutions and advice for other people’s problems. Little did she know that that is exactly the key to being a good listener.  She couldn’t solve anyone’s problems and she didn’t presuppose to try. So she just let them talk – usually while she went about the task of making dinner or canning tomatoes or washing dishes. Then again, maybe she wasn’t really listening at all!

I was surprised to learn, after I was married and had children of my own, that several of my high school friends still made the pilgrimage up the steep hill where we lived in order to “chit-chat” with my mother. She would casually inform me of their visits and of what they were doing in life, and I often wondered why they kept in touch with her but had lost touch with me! At her funeral, one of these old friends said to me, “I’m really going to miss our little talks – with your mother, I mean. She was a good listener.”

When my children were young and I was so busy with the never ending chores of motherhood, which of course left no time for writing, I would make a monthly-or-so phone call to my mother to unburden myself. I knew she understood the frustrations of a thwarted creative impulse because I had witnessed (and heard) her own struggles to pursue creativity in bits and pieces amid the chores of daily life. A few days later I’d get a letter in the mail – not crammed full of advice, but rather in brief acknowledgment of what I’d already said via phone. Then she’d go on to other things about the house or her church or her garden . . .

St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of writers 

Included in that letter would be a holy card of some designation – St. Jude was a favorite one she frequently sent, for he is the patron saint of lost causes. My family used to laugh about that. But there were other cards she’d send too, perhaps an archangel – Raphael, Michael, or Gabriel – to watch over me and guide me in the ways she did not presuppose to do.  I never knew why she sent me the card of St. Francis de Sales – until recently, when I looked it up. He is the patron saint of writers -- and he is known for his ability to "communicate with gentleness." 

I would put the “holy card of the month” on the refrigerator with a magnet – to remind me that someone had heard me – and that was a good solution.