It’s been a quiet season. I am no longer leading meetings, leading services, leading anything. I have engaged with no social media for 4 months and haven’t even missed it. I’ve been saying no to doing things I don’t really want to do and staying very close to home, close to the girls, close to my partner. I’ve been staying close to my soul.
In the quiet of these months, I have been called and called again to the practice of listening. To others, to myself. To the land with its wishing trees and ravens, its slow creeks and the kids who yell with delight.
I’m barely scratching the surface of what it means to truly listen.
There is a prerequisite for listening. And that is to stop talking. To truly hear, I have to pause. I have to get quiet. And make open space in conversations where I do not have the answers. But I, like you, do have my humanity made to receive words that bring life.
Listening, like reading, like dialogue, is a live event. Anything can happen. What happens when one listens (or reads, or dialogues) is not pre-determined. It is potent and unpredictable; it’s outcome is not preordained - listening is an engine of potential energy of transformation. If you are truly listening, you are open to being changed by the voice of the other. Listening is a live event where your final destination is not known or predictable.
In these last few months I have been processing the state of the Christian church I have served and tried to love – not the local church I pastored but the broader community we belonged to. I have been grieving what once again has happened in communities that say they worship a crucified God but refuse to listen to those at the margins. This is not the first time this has happened even in my own life and it is not relegated to a certain group of Christians only. I remember keenly as a young woman witnessing the damage done to women who tried to speak to their church leaders about the abusive men in their midst. But were told their perspectives were not valid, that the “ordained leader” was the voice of God and the “ordained leader” did not think this abuse was actually happening. The damage these blocked ears caused was untold, devastating. And still needs to be accounted for.
Blocked ears are not the purview of any one tradition, denomination, sect or even faith group. It seems to be a human thing we all can do when we have something we think we need to defend. It is a condition I develop regularly. Oh the irony of it coming from people who say they follow this undefended God…
I’ve never had my heart broken so much as when representatives of a faith demonstrated a commitment to not hearing. When the leaders of the community choose time-bound ideals about scripture, interpretation, customs and their own power over Christ-bound listening to the real people, the actual bearers of Christ – taking the time and listening without pre-deciding the outcome – well, there is no life there. Listening has become a dead event.
I sat through meeting after meeting where, instead of stopping their talking to listen, men plotted through church order to win. I sat horrified watching the glee on faces when marginalized people were silenced, when those who had a perspective as children of God were told they could not speak and to sit down. There is no life in places where listening has been refused. There is no truth where listening has been refused. There is no healing where listening has been refused. I grieve. I grieve. I grieve.
In these quiet last few months, I began a new program of spiritual care education with a practical placement in a busy hospital. As I sat down at my desk on the first day I found this quote printed out with a “Welcome Jacqui” above my chair:
"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 affect 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." Rachel Naomi Remen
What if every church in town stopped trying to blast its message out into the ears of people and just did the ordinary work of listening? What if the church in our time stopped trying to explain the world to everyone and just listened to its least powerful, least wealthy, least remembered members…letting God finally speak to it? What if the church stopped its incessant talking? What would change? What would heal? In a time where the world is both yelling and weeping, what would change if the people of God decided to not defend their power, their control, or even their ideals and just listened to their neighbors? To their own bodies? To the land? What sanctuary might be created in our cities? What kind of value generated? What wholeness generated? What witness to truth might we finally, actually bear?
To refuse to listen, is to refuse a soul.
And to refuse a soul cracks the world.
To listen, heals it.
Justice’s prerequisite is listening. There is no justice where there is no listening. A church that has rededicated itself to a non-listening stance to whole segments of the body of Christ is a church that will not do justice, thus it cannot ever hope to live righteous. It will however perpetuate injustice – it will perpetuate a hollow claim that does not in truth love souls but only talks at them…and cruelly at that.
I come back again and again to the words of Jesus in Matthew 25 – what you did to the least of these you did to me. Which means how we listened to the least of these, believed them when they told us their embodied stories and what they needed, that is how we listened to Christ – the one who came as an undefended baby, grew up, learned, listened and ended as an undefended lover of souls. To those who have ears, let them hear…
The practice of listening to real enfleshed lives is a skill. A cultivated one. Listening to others, listening to yourself, listening to the past and listening to the land. May we do life and not death with our listening.
May we hear the voice of God in the voice of the other. May we know the body of God in the body of the other. May we be seen by God through the eyes of the other. May we listen as if the world depended on it.
Here are a couple of podcasts that that flesh out what it means to hear that I highly recommend. The links are to the webpages but you can find them on spotify or apple podcasts.
Heavyweight Podcast Episode #52 “Lenny”
https://gimletmedia.com/shows/heavyweight/8whod8k9/52-lenny
On Being Podcast “David Isay: Listening as an Act of Love”
https://onbeing.org/programs/david-isay-listening-as-an-act-of-love/
The Ezra Klein Show
Nov 7 Amhad Iraqi: Why Palestinians Feel They’ve Been Duped https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-amjad-iraqi.html
Nov 10 Yossi Klein Halevi: What Israelis Fears the World Does Not Understand https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-yossi-klein-halevi.html
The Gray Area Podcast Kate Murphy: How to Listen
https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/23692685/how-to-listen-gray-area-kate-murphy-good-listener
Listen well friends.
(As always, the pictures are mine from the beloved creek below my home. If you ever visit me, I will likely ask you to come there with me.)