Search Results: listening
Listening is the Music of Love
One of the most supremely loving gestures we can give another is to listen to them. Yet for most of us, being listened to is a rare experience. What makes it so hard to give this simple gift to each other? We remember those days so well. The early romance days. Living in two different…
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Listening for true understanding
In our previous column, we made the point that marriage is like a contact sport, and that the ‘game’ is more fun, and certainly safer, when we both understand the rules of engagement. We outlined three rules for the Speaker and now we’d like to do the same for the Listener. In any intimate conversation,…
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Empathetic Listening
You can’t be a good communicator without being a superlative listener. Ron and Kathy Feher discuss how couples can learn to listen like a professional and enhance their connection.
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Listening with the Heart
The first step towards the kind of active listening that will facilitate an experience of intimacy is to examine some of our normal responses to the other’s personal sharing of what’s going on inside them. Resistance People tend to block the sharing of their emotions when the listener reacts defensively or signals that they don’t…
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Editing Ourselves
Balancing honesty with kindness & Effectiveness We live in a culture that champions unfiltered self-expression. We’re told that honesty is the ultimate virtue in relationships – that I have a right to say what’s on my mind, whenever I feel like it, and that our spouse should be ready to listen. It’s a message that…
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How to Help a Struggling Marriage – A Catholic Guide
“I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how.” If you’ve been in the position of having a friend, parishioner, or family member confide their marital problems, you’re in the majority – 69% of adult men and 78% of adult women have been there. For priests, we suspect that number reaches 100%. Unless you’ve had…
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Power of Prayer
Prayer does not change God, it does not always change the situation, but it does change the heart of the person praying. Many people do not trust prayer, or doubt it’s power to have an impact. After all, we’ve all had experiences of praying earnestly for something, only to be disappointed when what we sought…
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Couple Prayer
by Ron and Mavis Pirola In this year of Prayer and in preparation for the Jubilee Year of 2025, Pope Francis calls us to rediscover the great value and absolute need for prayer in personal life, in the life of the Church and in the world. So, what would be a better time to address…
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Finding Our Way to Heaven
We’ve been listening to Mike and Alicia Hernon’s podcast called Messy Families. One of their recurring messages for parents is: stop worrying about getting your kids to heaven – parenting is about helping you get there! When we first heard them say this it stopped us in our tracks. Mike and Lisa go on to…
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Being God’s presence to those we Accompany
Pope Francis has called Catholic communities to accompany couples at various stages. What does accompaniment look like, and is there anything special about a Catholic version? A few years back, our 23-year-old son found himself accompanying a stranger. At the time he was working for a building company that specialised in upgrades and maintenance for…
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