Two men were walking along a crowded city sidewalk. Suddenly, one of the men remarked, “Listen to the that lovely sound of the cricket.” But the other man could not hear the sound. So he asked his friend how he could hear the sound of a cricket amidst the roar of the traffic and the sound of the people around. Well, the first man, who was a zoologist, had trained himself to hear the sounds of nature.
He did not explain to his friend in words how he could hear the sound of the cricket, but instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a coin. He dropped the coin onto the sidewalk and watched intently as a dozen people began to look for the coin as they heard it clanking around the sounds of the traffic and the sounds of the city. He turned to his friend and said, “We hear what we listen for.”
Note: I lifted this anecdote from the gospel reflection of Fr. Nelson Orqueta posted on The Feast app last July 28, 2020.
