Discerning Together: Listening with and for Others
How knowing my own Garden Within helps me make room for yours
Over the past several weeks, we’ve spent a lot of time looking inward. We’ve explored the patterns of grace within us, what gets in the way, and the emotions that accompany our experiences. We’ve been learning to recognize what is moving within our Garden Within, becoming curious about the gifts we’ve received, the wounds we carry, and the ways God continues to meet us in all of it. But why?
Why spend so much time becoming aware of ourselves?
God never intended for us to remain enclosed within our own Garden Within.
The more I come to know what is growing within me, the more room I can make for another person to discover what is growing within theirs. And that, I believe, is where our interior work begins to bear fruit in the world - when we begin discerning together.
Discerning Together Begins with Loving My Neighbor as Myself
Years ago, I listened to a dear Jesuit priest friend preach about the greatest commandment, especially Jesus’ invitation to love our neighbor as ourselves. I’ll never forget his words, “Poor neighbor!”
He was speaking about the importance of being willing to encounter ourselves honestly. Because if I am unwilling to recognize my own gifts, limitations, woundedness, pride, judgments, and need for healing, what kind of love am I bringing to my neighbor?
That question has stayed with me.
The deeper I become aware of myself, the more authentic I can become in my relationships. But this isn’t easy work. It means encountering parts of myself I’d rather leave untouched. It means acknowledging judgments I didn’t realize I carried, recognizing where my pride protects something vulnerable, and admitting that some wounds still have a lot of healing ahead.
There are tears in this work. There is anger, sorrow, joy, fear, and sometimes a surprising peace right alongside all of it. And the work isn’t finished. I don’t expect it will be finished in this lifetime. But perhaps completion was never the invitation. Could it be, instead, to keep allowing God to stretch and soften the places within me that have closed, so I might become more available to love God, myself, and others? Could it be that, through God’s work within me, I might recognize in the fullness of my extended love to another, “blessed neighbor.”
Discerning Together Means Recognizing What Others Awaken Within Me
Every one of us carries a history. Our experiences leave impressions within us, through memory, emotion, and the senses. A particular tone of voice, an expression, a smell, or even a moment of silence can awaken something we have experienced before.
Sometimes we recognize the connection immediately. Other times, we simply notice that something has changed within us. We become anxious, irritated, defensive, or overwhelmed. We suddenly feel an urgency to fix something or withdraw from the conversation altogether. And the person standing before us may have no idea what has been awakened. This is why our work with the emotions wheel matters.
When I regularly take time to ask, What am I feeling? Where am I experiencing this in my body? What might this emotion be telling me? I begin to recognize the movements of my own interior landscape. Then, when something similar arises in a conversation with my spouse, my child, a friend, or someone at work, I may have a little more freedom to recognize it. Something is happening within me right now. This person has their own experience, but something from my experience is here too. From this awareness, I can quietly invite God into it.
The more I recognize what belongs to my own story, the more room I can make for someone else's story.
Discerning Together: Three Ways of Responding to Another’s Pain
I use an illustration in my teaching that has become particularly meaningful to me. It shows three ways we might respond when someone else is struggling. In the first picture, one person stands outside a pit, watching another who has fallen in. In the second, both people are in the pit together. In the third, one person reaches toward the person in the pit while staying anchored to a tree. I can recognize myself in all three.
Sometimes I watch from afar. There are wounds within me that are still tender, places where I know another person’s suffering could awaken something I am not yet able to hold without becoming overwhelmed. I recognize that keeping a little distance is what I can offer in that moment. That awareness matters too.
Other times, I’ve fallen right into the pit with someone. Their pain touches something so deeply familiar within me that I become consumed by it. My desire to help is genuine, but suddenly I struggle to stay present because my own experience has become so powerful.
And then there are times when I can reach toward someone while staying rooted. I can hear their pain without losing awareness of my own interior movements. I can recognize what is happening within me while remaining available to what is happening within them.
But here’s what I want us to remember. None of us lives permanently in that third picture.
The purpose of our interior work isn’t to become people who never fall into the pit. It is to become increasingly aware of where we are, what is moving within us, and how God might be inviting us to love from that very place. Sometimes that means reaching toward another; other times it means recognizing our limits; and sometimes it means letting someone else reach toward us.
Discerning Together While Remaining Rooted in Christ
The question beneath that illustration is one I return to often: What keeps me tethered to God as I reach toward another?
For me, the tree represents Christ’s presence within us. It isn’t my emotional strength or my ability to understand every situation that keeps me rooted. It is the relationship I continue tending with God. And that relationship includes the difficult work of knowing myself.
Imagine I’m listening to someone share something painful, and I suddenly notice that I’m overwhelmed. Because I’ve spent time praying with my own emotional landscape, perhaps I recognize that feeling. I know something about what overwhelm feels like in my body. I know it's telling me I am carrying too much. And I remember that when I’ve prayed with the emotions wheel, I’ve noticed energetic across from overwhelmed.
That word has become part of my conversation with God. Right there, in the midst of listening, I can quietly pray, “God, I’m overwhelmed. Help me recognize what is mine to carry. And if it is Your desire, give me the energy and freedom to remain present to this person.”
Holding the branch of internal awareness and connection to Christ’s Spirit within myself, I discover I can reach into the conversation more freely. The grace doesn’t determine the action. It opens the discernment. And because I’ve been practicing this awareness in my own prayer, I may be better able to recognize what is happening when I’m with someone else. Not perfectly, of course, or every time. But perhaps a little more often.
Discerning Together Makes Room for Another’s Garden Within
Jesus' invitation to love our neighbor as ourselves continues to challenge me. The more honestly I encounter my own pride, judgments, woundedness, and limitations, the harder it becomes to pretend everyone else has their life figured out.
I begin to recognize that others carry their own histories, fears, wounds, and desires to be loved and understood. Some of those experiences have shaped the walls they’ve built around themselves. Just as mine have shaped me. As I become more willing to encounter those places within myself, I become less hurried to judge them in another. I can listen without needing to correct and remain curious when someone’s experience differs from mine. I can recognize that I can't manufacture another person’s healing, discernment, or relationship with God.
Jesus was wonderfully expansive in His invitation into relationship. He met people where others might have avoided them, and He invited them into something that could transform their lives. But He didn’t force them to remain - many walked away. That reminds me that love must also make room for freedom.
I am not responsible for bringing someone else's Garden Within into bloom. I am invited to love them while God continues His work there.
This belongs to all of us. Not simply those serving in formal ministry. It belongs in our marriages, friendships, families, workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities. Every relationship becomes another place where our own Garden Within meets another’s.
Could this be part of what it means to take up our cross and follow Christ?
Not to become perfect. But to keep entering the difficult, beautiful work of love, allowing God to transform us in our own lives so we become more available to Him and our neighbor.
An Embodied Pause: Discerning Together
Find a comfortable place to sit or stand. Feel your feet meeting the ground and take a few gentle breaths.
Bring to mind a recent conversation that stirred something within you. Perhaps you felt overwhelmed, defensive, afraid, joyful, or deeply moved.
Notice what happens in your body as you remember. Without judging yourself, ask: What was happening within me during that conversation? Was I watching from afar, falling into the pit, or reaching while rooted?
Now imagine yourself holding onto the tree in that third illustration, recognizing Christ’s presence accompanying you. You don’t need to change where you were. Simply invite God to meet you there. Lord, help me recognize what is mine. Help me remain open to what belongs to another. Show me how I might love with greater freedom. Rest there for a few breaths.
Journaling: Listening with and for Others
When I consider the three pictures of the pit, where do I most often recognize myself? Are there particular relationships or experiences that tend to draw me into one response more than another?
What emotions or familiar experiences arise within me when someone else’s story touches my own? What have I learned about those movements through my prayer and reflection?
Where might God be inviting me to greater freedom in relationship, whether through reaching toward someone, recognizing my limits, or allowing another person to accompany me?
A Closing Prayer
God, who walks with me in my Garden Within, help me encounter all that grows here: the gifts and the wounds, the places of healing, and those still waiting to be tended. Give me courage to know myself honestly, and tenderness to meet others as they are. Keep me rooted in Your love as I reach toward the lives of those around me. And when I cannot reach, remind me that You are still present, working within us both. Amen.
From the garden within me to the garden within you, where God awaits,
Kimi
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