Learning to Listen Led By Rev. Steven Protzman October 12, 2014 First Reading: "Listening" by Rachel Naomi Remen 1 Second Reading: "Deep Listening" by John Fox 2 Learning to Listen By Rev. Steven Protzman October, 2014 It is said that we often listen to reply rather than understand. What does it mean to truly listen and how can we cultivate the spiritual practice of listening? As we welcome new members and the unique gifts, talents and energy they bring as our long and wondrous journey continues, let us commit ourselves to the deeper relationships that happen when we listen to one another and to the yearnings of our hearts. President Franklin Roosevelt did not enjoy the long receiving lines at the White House. He complained that no one really paid any attention to what he said. One day, during a reception, he decided to try an experiment. To each person who passed down the line and shook his hand, Mr. Roosevelt murmured, "I murdered the Vice President this morning." The guests responded with phrases like, "Marvelous! Keep up the good work. We are proud of you. God bless you, sir." It was not until the end of the line, while greeting the ambassador from Bolivia, that his words were actually heard. Nonplussed, the Bolivian ambassador leaned over and whispered, "I'm sure he had it coming." I'm the oldest of eight children. In my teen years, my parents both worked full time to support our family and I took on the role of surrogate parent for my siblings. Taking care of people comes quite naturally for me so it was a quite a shock to be told in my pastoral care class during seminary that my job is not to solve peoples' problems or to give advice. I had to learn how to listen, how to be fully present to others, and how to put aside my need to fix things, my tendency to judge others, and the urge to participate in their drama. In some pastoral care situations, there may be something I can do, like providing some financial assistance in an emergency or making a referral, but my primary task is to meet a person where they are and receive their story. Even if their story is surreal to me or strikes me as sheer fiction, my task is not to determine the truth or plausibility of their story. My task is to create a sacred space in which they are free to tell their story and to receive their words with an open heart, trusting that they are speaking their truth. The other wisdom my pastoral care teachers shared is that I don't have to fix things. Most people already know how to solve a problem or deal with a difficult situation or what they really want to do. What they need is the space and the encouragement to name the problem or challenge, to draw out their own inner wisdom, and to come to their own conclusions. We can help them do that by listening. I also learned in seminary that there is more than one way to listen. As Rachel Remen told us in the first reading, listening may mean sitting with them in loving silence. There's no need to do anything but simply receive them. She tells us to even let them cry 1
without offering a tissue, knowing that they're working through sadness and grief. There's also something known as reflective listening, which is more interactive. As a listener, you respond with questions or statements which are a paraphrase of what has been said, indicating that you've truly heard them. For example, I might say to President Roosevelt: "So if I've heard you correctly, you killed the vice president this morning." If I want to further the conversation, having decided I won't summon the police quite yet, I might say: "Tell me more about that." Or ask: "How are you feeling about that?" using open ended questions to invite the conversation to continue. If I wanted to shut the conversation down or not take it to a deeper place, I would ask a yes or no question like: "Was it fun?" or perhaps say: "I'm sure he had it coming." As part of my ministerial training and preparations, I took two units of Clinical Pastoral Education. My first unit of CPE was a semester spent visiting patients in a hospital and processing those visits with my classmates as we learned together how to minister to people who were dealing with a health crisis or dying. By the time the unit was over, the favorite question my colleagues and I began asking each other, no doubt born of our mental and emotional exhaustion, was "Could you say less about that?" Learning to truly listen, although it seems simple, is not easy. Rachel Remen tells us that this way of listening required a change in her understanding: "It certainly went against everything I had been taught since I was very young. I thought people listened only because they were too timid to speak or did not know the answer." 3 When we do take time to truly listen to another person and aren't sure what to do, often the context of the conversation will provide clues about whether to offer your presence through silence or to respond with reflective listening. Of course, you can always say, "Maybe you should talk to Steven about that". No matter the techniques that seem best to use, what is most important is that we truly listen. My colleague Bob Johansen says that "we all know when people are really listening to us, and when they aren't. Sometimes it's the obvious signs they have their cell phone out and are texting away, whether on the table or under it, nodding as if that will make us think they are listening. Or we share a story or an experience and as soon as the first few words are out of our mouths, we can see that instead of listening, they are rehearsing their speech, the advice they are going to give you, or they are lost in their own story that was tangentially prompted by what you had to say. 'You think what happened to you is bad. Well, listen to what happened to me...'" 4 I told a congregant just the other day that I know you're listening to me because this room is incredibly quiet during my sermons and those of you who learn by doing an activity while listening are knitting. How do you learn to listen? One of the best ways to cultivate the art of listening is through your spiritual life, taking time for silence. Our first Unitarian Universalist source of spiritual wisdom, direct experience of mystery and wonder, is about listening for the still, small voice within that will help you discover the wisdom, the gifts, the compassion and the strength that lie within you. Bob Johansen says that: "Inner wisdom lies deep within each one of us, waiting to be discovered, like some buried treasure we've been living with our whole lives, yet never realized. Deep listening calls us to pay attention to our own lives, our bodies, our hearts, our minds." 5 Rev. Gail Seavey writes that deep 2
listening is taught by religious traditions across time and culture. The Mayans sought to listen to the vibrations of the sun; Hindu listen to the Gods and Goddesses vibrating to the cosmic waters stirred by the cries of their people; Sufi mystics listen to others as if everyone was their master speaking to them cherished last words. Mother Teresa was once asked how she prayed. "Oh", she said, "that s easy, I listen." "And what does God do?" She replied, God listens." 6 Buddhism teaches its followers to be mindful, to be completely present to the moment, which is necessary to truly listen. Does your spiritual life include regularly taking time for silence and listening to what your heart is telling you? As UUs, listening is an important part of our covenantal relationship. Our polity, the way we govern ourselves and work together, is grounded in our Fifth Principle, use of the democratic process. We seek consensus by listening to one another with open hearts and minds as we make decisions and we vote to determine what our collective wisdom and vision calls us to do in service to our mission. As we move toward our facilities decision, one of the most powerful things I've heard from the Steering Committee many times is the statement that the highest priority is making sure the congregation is heard throughout this process and that we take time to listen to each other. Our Third Principle challenges us to accept one another and to encourage spiritual growth. When we truly listen to someone, we help them become their most authentic selves. Poet e.e. cummings says that: "We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit." In a sermon I gave a year ago, I spoke about radical hospitality, which came from the Rule of St. Benedict. Radical means extreme or revolutionary or out of the ordinary and Benedict tells us that radical hospitality begins by listening. The rule says Listen carefully, my child and attend with the ear of your heart. Listen with the ear of your heart. That means if you ask "how are you?" you aren't hoping for the "Iowa nice" answer of "fine". To listen with the ear of your heart is to be prepared for the possibility that someone will honestly answer your question. You will need to be ready to listen with compassion and care and without judgment, to create the sacred space that Rachel Naomi Remen speaks of in the first reading, a sacred space that offers the potential for healing: "Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing. It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden." 7 Writer Margaret Wheatley, who studies organizational behavior and change, muses about why being heard is so healing. She writes: "I don't know the full answer to that question, but I do know it has something to do with the fact that listening creates relationship. We know from science that nothing in the universe exists as an isolated or independent entity. Everything takes form from relationships, be it subatomic particles sharing energy or 3
ecosystems sharing food. In the web of life, nothing living lives alone. Our natural state is to be together. In the English language, the word for "health" comes from the same root as the word for "whole". We can't be healthy if we're not in relationship. And "whole" is from the same root word as "holy." Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy." 8 In the second reading, John Fox tells us that the power of listening transforms the person being heard: When someone deeply listens to you, the room where you stay starts a new life and the place where you wrote your first poem begins to glow in your mind's eye. It is as if gold has been discovered! When someone deeply listens to you, your bare feet are on the earth and a beloved land that seemed distant is now at home within you. 9 Imagine someone listening to you in a way that allows you to feel connected with life again or more deeply than you've felt connected before. Imagine knowing that as you listen with the ear of your heart to someone, you are helping them move toward healing and greater wholeness, the capacity to be more fully alive. What a wonderful gift to give someone! And what a wonderful gift to give the world, a simple gift that can make such a difference. Jim Reapsome, a former sports writer and now retired as an evangelical minister, tells about how teenage prostitutes, during interviews in a San Francisco study, were asked: "Is there anything you needed most and couldn't get?" Their response, invariably preceded by sadness and tears was unanimous: "What I needed most was someone to listen to me. Someone who cared enough to listen to me." 10 I wonder whose lives would be different if we had listened to them. I wonder whose lives are different because we listen to them. We're welcoming new members this morning. New members, I charged you to grow in your faith and share your special gifts with us and with the world. I reminded all of us that ours is a shared ministry; each of us has a vital role to play in the life and work of this congregation. I asked our new members to commit to sharing their energy and ideas, their dreams and your hopes. I now ask all of you to create sanctuary for one another; to commit yourselves once again to truly listening to each other and to helping one another heal, become more whole, and discovering who you truly are. That is how we will continue to touch hearts, change lives, and transform our world. May the cup of your lives be filled to overflowing with the understanding and love of others. May you each know the healing and wholeness that comes with truly being listened to and may you offer others the gifts of compassion, care and listening with the ear of your heart. 4
References 1 Remen, Rachel Naomi, "Just Listen", blog, http://www.livinglifefully.com/flo/flobejustlisten.htm 2 Fox, John, "When Someone Deeply Listens to You", poem, http://poeticmedicine.org/poetry.html 3 Remen, Rachel, Ibid. 4 Johansen, Rev. Bob, "Deep Calls to Deep", Sermon, Feb. 16, 2014, www.firstchurchlancasterma.org, 20140216deepcallstodeep 5 Johansen, Rev. Bob, Ibid. 6 Seavey, Rev. Gail, Sermon, "Holy Listening", Sermon, Aug. 5, 2007, https://firstuunashville.org/sermonblog/?p=5 7 Remen, Rachel, Ibid. 8 Wheatley, Margaret, "Listening as Healing", Shambhala Sun article, December 2001, http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/listeninghealing.html 9 Fox, John, Ibid. 10 Reapsome, Jim, "Homemade", http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/l/listening.htm 5