‘Keep silence and listen’

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HAVE you ever tried to eat a doughnut without licking your lips? There’s something about sugary lips which makes it almost impossible to resist. Perhaps this is one of the body’s hard-wired reflexes.

There’s something similar with the slow emergence out of lockdown. After months of not hugging, not kissing, not embracing our loved ones, we must now re-train our arms to remain by our sides as we squeal in delight at the sight of a much-missed grandchild, parent or friend.

In the stramash of what is known as ‘the Jerusalem Council’ of Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas are in the business of retraining hard-wired habits. The old laws may have been overturned (vv1-2), but it takes a lifetime to retrain old habits to change a culture. This is a chapter of ‘no small dissension and debate’ (v2). And yet at its heart there is a pivotal passage which reveals much about this process of change: ‘The whole assembly kept silence, and listened.’ (v12)

One of the most moving church events I have attended was the gathering of over 1,000 Quakers at the Quakers in Britain Yearly Meeting. Together we listened, then held silence as the Clerk attempted to summarise the sense of the Meeting.

This is ‘doughnut listening’ at its best: the kind of active listening which demands that we still the hard-wired reflex, the chatter in our head composing our response, and instead truly listen, with the intent of being changed, to the ‘other’.

This hard-wired reflex, to compose a response while the other is talking, is part of normal everyday conversation. But when the stakes are high, when we are in conflict, or when we are aware of deep differences between us, then we are called upon to listen to one another with minds empty of rhetoric or retort.

In ‘Reconcile: conflict transformation for ordinary Christians’, John Paul Lederach describes three listening movements in times of conflict: 

1 Listening as a spiritual discipline: Listening intentionally to the ‘other’ transcends social or physical distancing and allows us to connect deeply to those with whom we may hold differing views.

2 Listening as like prayer: In as much as prayer is about attentive awareness and the discipline of waiting for God, so we are invited in prayer to adopt an attitude of listening for 80% of the time over speaking for 20%. This ratio could revolutionise our relationship with God as much as with those around us.

3 Listening as seeking God: The ministry of reconciliation is a ministry of creating space for each and all to listen to God – a prophetic listening space out of which justice and peace is found. 

This quality of listening led to ‘the consent of the whole church’ (v22) and ‘unanimous decisions’ (v25) which in turn led to the apostles being ‘sent off in peace’ (v35). Despite inevitable ongoing differences (v39) this might be a style of deep ‘doughnut listening’ for us to practise in our brave new world. ¤

Ruth Harvey is a Church of Scotland minister and Leader of the Iona Community.

The Iona Community is a dispersed Christian ecumenical community working for peace and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship. www.iona.org.uk

This article appears in the September 2020 Issue of Life and Work

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