19 mins
Listening and Hearing
IF there is such a thing as holy silence then her twin sister must be holy listening.
If the practice of silence is a gateway to the presence of God, so too, in my experience, is the power of the listening ear. But in a culture of so much noise and of so many different voices how should we listen? G K Chesterton reminded us that “there’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing” and it is a sad indictment on the way in which we hold our conversations that most often as we listen to others, our minds race off to recollections of similar stories and all we are doing is waiting for the other person to finish talking so that we can top their story with a better one. There is a place for that kind of conversation – one story leads to another, each person learns something about the other and acquaintance deepens. This, however, is not the kind of listening that I have in mind.
This is more like hearing and then jumping in to take the conversation in another direction. The kind of listening I have in mind is often called active listening and it is that kind of listening which has the power to be transformative.
No doubt you will remember 2014 and the run up to the Scottish referendum.
It was a time of important discussion about Scotland’s future, but so much of the discussion was conducted as a debate with one side trying to shout louder than the other. The Church of Scotland, however, decided that a shouting match wasn’t good enough for such important business, so it arranged for a Respectful Dialogue between the opposing campaigns. The key difference was in the rules of engagement.
The word debate is derived from an old French word debatre, meaning down completely. In a debate we listen to the other side only to beat down their argument and bolster our own, in a respectful dialogue we offer the other side the courtesy of a fair hearing and while we may not agree with their conclusions we keep a clear distinction between contesting the argument and denigrating the other person. Respectful dialogue challenges our power to listen and at least understand where the other person is coming from – even if finally we do not come to an agreement.
The writer and theologian Henri Nouwen describes listening as: “much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking our words more seriously and discover their true selves.” This is the kind of listening that a good supervisor or counsellor will offer, so that instead of analysis and poorly constructed criticism we get the opportunity to hear ourselves speak, hear ourselves articulate the solutions to our own problems and regain our self-worth, self-respect and confidence.
“The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking our words more seriously and discover their true selves.”
Too much gratuitous advice and command is spinning around out there. The words: “if I were you, I would…….” are far too common. You are not me, but if I am inviting you into my story it is not because I want you to make decisions for me, it is because I want you to help me find what’s right for me. And the best way to do that is to listen so attentively that you can reflect back what I have said and leave me focused on the issues that I have to address.
In the church, particularly in relation to the controversial issues that would divide us, this is how we should listen to one another. Paul Tillich reminds us that “the first duty of love is to listen” and how often have you been reminded of the old adage:, “God gave us two ears and one mouth and we should use them in that proportion!”
This article appears in the February 2018 Issue of Life and Work
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This article appears in the February 2018 Issue of Life and Work