August 6, 2006

Holy Listening

By Julianne Stokstad

The Middle East seems to me on this beautiful summer morning to be near some kind of tipping point. The war in Lebanon and Israel is breaking everyone's heart. The war in Iraq with the daily horrors grows closer to civil war. Innocent civilians, women and children, are paying the price. Peace seems so very far away. The primary question today for me is how will we ever all get along?

Written in prison, most likely by Paul, this letter to the young church in Ephesus asks similar questions as it speaks about how to be church. Getting along in any community is not as simple getting one's own way. Church is all about relationships and so Paul begins by outlining behavior that sustains and nurtures healthy relationships. Walking the talk, living the call involves humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love while making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in peace. That's how it is supposed to be.

It's a hard call. Paul sets the bar high. There seems to be a destructive and violent tendency in humans and a stubbornly resistant pattern of blaming those who are different from us. We are called in church to be Christ's instrument of reconciliation in this world. Looking at our Christian history, one can honestly say the Christian church has caused wars and much violence. If the Church's purpose is to bring unity, we haven't done very well with that one either. We, Protestants, have argued and split and argued and splintered into great numbers of different denominations. We have difficulty agreeing. Unity doesn't mean we have to agree. Unity doesn't mean we must be the same. It means we must look deeper than our differences to our common love of God. Our unity is grounded in one God, one faith and one baptism, one Spirit, Paul says. Indeed, it is unity within our diversity that we are called to. We must look deeper than our beliefs, deeper than our theological interpretations, deeper than our liturgical practices, deeper than our culture, deeper than our political views.

To look deeply means we seek to identify what is real, what is true in ourselves. To do that Paul tells us God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth and tell it in love---like Christ in everything. (Eugene Peterson, The Message) Loving truth telling is one of the most challenging tasks I have and it is an ordination vow.

Truth is a loaded word for most of us because we were force-fed "the truth." By that I mean we were taught what is right and what we should believe by our parents, church, priests. More subtly, we are taught by our culture, our peers and now the media. While questioning beliefs is an adolescent right of passage, few look deeply within. It is so much easier to tell little lies, to not rock the boat of other's expectations of us. We are rewarded by acceptance of our families and peers when we go along with them.

Truth telling is scary because we are exposed and vulnerable when we reveal our truest self. We have all had the experience of being laughed at, humiliated, rejected, or even punished for telling our truth. We fear this and worse. For example, last week we heard the courageous and inspirational story of Kayla Bonewell's experience on the SoulForce Equality bus ride. Her passion for justice and making the world a better place so that LGTB people never be rejected for being who they are jumped out at us as her truth. To listen deeply to the story under the story is to hear the pain of rejection. Reading her blog, I learned her father disowned her for her participation in the bus ride.

Getting along with others, loving our neighbors, even loving our enemies is not made easier by telling them how what they do, how they live or what they believe they are doing wrong. Hardly any one ever changes an opinion or behavior because of a debate. Verbal warfare, like other kinds of warfare, just entrenches people more deeply in their position.

What if we took a different path? Instead of telling others how to change, what if we learned to listen deeply to their story? What if we were practiced at creating the conditions of safety and trust so that truth could be told in love and received in that same love? You see, understanding is the very foundation of love and looking deeply is its basic practice

Let me tell you about three different groups of which I am a part where this is being practiced. First, Caryl Hodges and I are participating Courage to Lead for Clergy and Lay Leaders meeting quarterly. The teaching is based on Parker Palmer's writing, and helps each of us find and connect our truth to how we live. To do this, we need to find ways to get in touch with our inner truth within us. Call it soul, God, heart, this work assumes each of us has this within us. There is no intention of fixing or saving or even advising anyone, but rather to learn to listen to each other's stories. How respectful and refreshing it is to trust each person's experience, and their inner goodness. When we learn more, we will bring some techniques here for those who want to practice this.

The second way I am learning this is with the Phoenix Affirmation group. Last Sunday night, we discussed loving our neighbor. Here are a few of the points: to love our neighbor as THEY want to be loved, to look deeply for the good in others; to discipline ourselves to listen deeply; not to prepare our arguments ahead while listening to the other. Such listening we decided is an action filled with Christian kindness.

Third, I met with Judy Donovan this week, the new organizer for the Marin Organizing Committee. Listening to each other's stories is THE method for developing trust and understanding. But we need practice as it isn't how we usually relate to each other.

If we aim to love our neighbor, especially our neighbor who doesn't think or live like we do, the way to begin to do this is to listen deeply to their story. Allow them to tell their truth and respectfully hear it. We do not have to convince them to agree with us and we do not have to agree with them. As the beloved Body of Christ, let us practice listening deeply to each other because it will change us.

I'd like to end with a poem by John Fox called "Deeply Listening."

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup you have had since childhood

and watching it fill up with cold fresh water.

When it balances on the top of the rim, you're understood

When it overflows and touches your skin you are loved.

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 blow in your mind's eye.

It's as if gold has been discovered.

When someone deeply listens to you

your bare feet are on the earth

and the beloved land that seemed distant is now at home within you.

May it be so.