IT IS common nowadays to be surrounded by noise.

We have radios, tapes and discs at homes, iPods on trains, background music when eating out, intrusive incidental music to accompany even documentary programmes on television, and mobile phones everywhere.

We learn to ignore it much of the time, to swich in and out of attention.

Hearing without attentive listening all too often becomes a habit, which can spill over into the way we attend to what others are saying to us.

We find our minds wondering, or concentrate on what we are going to say in ‘reply’.

Sharing our experience, offering the solution we think best, declaring how and why we disagree, can become more important to us than listening to others. Real communication and the development of true understanding are stifled.

Perhaps our prayer life is the same. We can treat it as a time to inform God of our needs and those of others, and offer solutions we believe are for the best.

This can be a helpful way of preparing our hearts and minds. But one thing may remain needful, namely that quieting of our thoughts that leads to attentive listening to God’s leading.

Quakers try to recognise this leading as, waiting in expectant silence, we find ‘promptings of love and truth’ arising in our hearts.

We are urged to ‘take heed’ to these- to pay real attention to them and to respond in our lives.

Perhaps practising such attentive listening to God and to others can lead us through the experience of Lent and the Cross to the newness of life Resurrection reveals.

Vera Dolton, Preston Patrick Local Quaker Meeting