Learning to Listen
Led By Rev. Steven Protzman
October 12, 2014
First Reading:
Second Reading:
"Listening" by Rachel Naomi Remen1
"Deep Listening" by John Fox2
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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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