In 1987, an aboriginal elder from the Daly River, Miriam Ungunmerr-Baumann, addressed a liturgy conference in Tasmania. The content of that presentation struck a deep resonance with her audience. Miriam began: “What I want to talk about today is another special quality of my people. I believe it is the most important. …. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language, this quality is called ‘dadirri’. It is inner, deep listening, and quite, still awareness. ‘Dadirri’ recognizes the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call ‘contemplation’. When I experience ‘dadirri’ I am made whole again. I can sit on the river bank or walk through the trees; even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silent awareness. There is no need of words”.
This is strikingly similar to the Jewish tradition recalled in today’s Gospel – Mark 12:28-34: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one . . .”. In response to the scribe’s question, Jesus recalls the first words of the Shema. There are two impressive things about this reference to the prayer that each member of his audience would have repeated hundreds of times throughout their lives. The first is the word that gives the prayer its name: Shema. That word can mean “obey”, “hear” or “listen to”. In this instance it is generally translated as “hear” or “listen”. Is there anything more basic than that? Hear what?
To address that question we must turn to the second thing, the phrase “the Lord our God”. Whenever that expression occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures it is a reminder of the Exodus and the Covenant. In Deuteronomy 6:4, where these words are found, the same Hebrew word that was heard by Moses on Horeb (Sinai) is used: Yahweh – see Exodus 3:15.
The emphasis should not be put on us and what we must do without firstly and thoroughly hearing what God has done and continues to do. God is love. In love God has entered human history and continues to be with us in a Covenant of love. Have you really heard that truth? Has it permeated all your heart, all your soul, all your mind? Do you feel the strength of it?
God speaks to us the word of love in and through our daily experiences – in our rising in the morning and our retiring at night, in our getting dressed and our preparing food, in our triumphs and our failures, in our bodily delight and pain, in the excitement and the tedium of it all. Listen and hear!
“Like Jesus, you have to listen and listen. It will take you all your life to hear the Father's word of love for you; indeed it will take you all your eternity” (Maria Boulding, The Coming of God, The Printery House, Conception Abbey Missouri, 1982/2000, 85).
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