He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. - Matthew 11.15

The shape of your ears affects how you hear.

Scientists tell us that we judge the direction of a sound by which ear it reaches first: Let the faucet drip from my left as I bed down for the night, and my insomnia will begin on that side a millisecond before it does on the other. Height, however, works differently: The brain calculates the ricochet of a noise off the various moguls and arroyos of your outer ear and determines its origin.

To test this theory, a group of researchers at the University of Montreal fitted subjects with slices of plastic that subtly changed the topography of their ears. Result: They miscalculated whether noises came from above or below them. An MRI showed that neurons in the relevant portion of the brain misfired badly. In a week or so, the brain adjusted and subjects' scores returned to normal. 

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 

Jesus says that our hearing has less to do with physical function and more to do with the spiritual ability to tell whether a word comes from above or below. On one level, the vast majority of people can hear or read Our Lord's teachings. Speaking spiritually, however, many of us - like the majority in Jesus' own time - lack the discernment to peg the divine origin of the message. Sin works like a skin-tight distortion device which scrambles the neurons of the soul. 

The hearing ear and the seeing eye - the Lord has made them both - Proverbs 20.12. May God peel away the foreign objects that cling skin-close to our souls and distort our spiritual hearing. May we indeed receive ears to hear the divine word that comes from above.