Quick to listen

Listening can be a challenge. I was getting some things at the hardware store a while back, and when I got to the clerk, she started scanning my things and said, “Hello, how are you today?” I said, “I’m fine, thank you very much. How are you today?” Still scanning, she said, “I’m fine, thanks. How are you today?” I almost said, “I’m fine, thanks. How are you today?” But I resisted, knowing I could have done the same thing—asking about your day while busy going about mine.

This week the Super Adults gathered on the parking lot for lunch and a program—the lunch is always delicious, and the program, always very interesting. If you want to find out more about Super Adults, a wonderful community within and beyond Laurel Heights, you can reach out to the church office.

Thursday the group heard beekeeper David Wood explain his craft. Meanwhile I was a busy bee myself—outside with the group, then in my office, then back outside; coming and going, occasionally catching part of the beekeeper’s presentation. At one point I dipped into his lecture just as he was saying what sounded like an advertisement:

“So let’s go eat a lot of honey. Then we’ll all be fat and happy. And all we’ll want to do is lie around and do nothing.” I thought to myself, That is the strangest sales pitch I think I’ve ever heard. Then I heard the next sentence, and realized he was talking about bees, not humans:

“So let’s go eat a lot of honey. Then we’ll all be fat and happy. And all we’ll want to do is lie around and do nothing. So we find a tree, gather on a nice branch, and swarm for a few hours.”

“Be quick to listen,” James writes in the section of his letter Karen read with us just now. But I know as well as you do that there’s nothing quick about learning to listen. The imperative in James is short—four words; the task, the art, the discipline that goes with it, is life-long.

Parents, on average, spend less than ten minutes a day listening to their children. Children and youth, meanwhile, spend seven and a half hours a day on average with electronic devices, often with earbuds blocking out other distractions, such as the voices of parents.

A 24-hour news cycle claims our continuous partial attention, often concerning us just vaguely enough that we set the news aside until we pick it up again a while later, only to set it aside again in the same way as before, the news cycle becoming a cycle of dabbling in discouragement.

Be quick to listen? We are a society that is quick to do just about everything but listen. James is calling the Jesus community to a different life, a life of listening that leads to doing. But how?

Let me suggest a path.

First: take a Sabbath from sound, and practice listening to nothing. That is, make some silence, as we did just earlier with Laura and the children. Turn off car radio, tv, apps on the phone, the phone; and in time, with practice, the voices and distractions and to do lists in your head as well.

And take in—even if it’s just for a few minutes at first, or a minute, or a moment—what over the last hundred years has become one of the rarest commodities on the planet: silence . . .

Having cultivated an open space within our minds, our hearts, our spirits, we can then turn more readily to listen to another person, another melody, another need beyond ourselves.

In time perhaps we begin to move from continuous partial attention to purposeful full attention until more and more “How are you?” is a question untied to any other task. And so is the listening for an answer beyond “Fine, thanks.”

Likewise, when listening begins from a place of silence, “How is the world?” begins to happen with intention, with openness and concern, with a willingness, a readiness to respond.

Listen to silence, taking a brief Sabbath from sound. Let that silence lead to purposeful listening to loved ones, to the world. Until we’ve inverted T.S. Eliot’s description: Where shall the Word be found, where shall the Word resound? Here . . . where there has been enough silence.

Finally, here’s a marvelous thing: listen for the divine whisper beneath what we hear in the voices of others. The Jewish mystical tradition of bat kol teaches that God’s voice is birthed through other voices. Bat kol is, literally, the daughter of a voice. Beneath someone’s answer to “How are you?” beneath the clamor of a noisy, needy world, listen for that bat kol, that divine voice, the Spirit gifting you with both guidance for responding and the grace to heed that guidance and respond in that way.

Where would God have us turn with our encouragement, our compassion, our gestures of hope and joy, with our delicate but durable demonstrations that God is love, and regardless of appearances sometimes to the contrary is silently working for good in us, in each other, and in the world? Elie Wiesel has gifted us with this assurance: Everything becomes possible by the mere presence of someone who knows how to listen, to love, and to give of themselves.

Two summers ago Vacation Bible School took us to outer space, journeying to the planets, and to other galaxies, celebrating the God of the universe. You may remember that this whole building was decorated for the occasion, including a big poster of Jupiter on the west wall of the gym. One day the children played a game in which one child was blindfolded, turned in circles a couple of times, then, with the help of the group, guided across the gym to touch that poster of Jupiter. The catch was that only voices could be used to guide the blindfolded person across the gym.

You can imagine how that went each time: A cacophony of voices shouting to the one in the blindfold: Go left! Go right! Now go straight! Left! Straight, straight, straight. Right . . . When the child reached the far wall and lifted their hand to touch Jupiter everyone cheered, they all crossed the gym floor again, and another child took a turn.

One little girl was blindfolded, then began listening for cues. Go left! She went right. Go right! She went left, or simply paused, uncertain which way was right. She clearly didn’t know her left from her right.

As I think about the year and a half we’ve been through, her predicament provides a very accurate analogy. We’re hearing voices from all directions, and not sure which to follow. Not sure we know left from right, up from down, backward from forward.

Go left! Go right! Go forward! Go backward! Be more cautious! Be more courageous! Open up! Close down! Go faster! Go slower! Required. Recommended. Encouraged. Suggested. Left! Right! Straight! Over, under, around, and through!

The little girl was not making much headway toward Jupiter, and seemed to be growing confused and embarrassed. She must have been about ready to yank off the blindfold and quit the game.

Then suddenly she heard a voice above the shouts of the other children. An older boy in the group sensed she was having trouble with directions. Soon his voice was rising above the cluttered shouts of the others.

The girl in the blindfold heard this voice say, “Follow my voice.” “Come this way.” And she did. The boy backed toward Jupiter as he continued speaking to her, and she cautiously moved in the direction of the voice she was hearing. Soon she had crossed the gym floor, reached up, and touched the poster of the giant planet. A slight smile crossed her face.

Go left! Go right! Faster with all this! Slower! Be careful! Stop being so cautious! I know a voice that waits to be listened to beneath other voices, maybe to be born from among those voices, a voice that would lead us to one another, lead us across the chasms that divide us, lead us across our discouragement or confusion with the challenges in our work and our world just now; lead us across the gym floor to a planet that’s a bit smaller than Jupiter, a living planet that waits to be touched by a tentative but courageous and compassionate hand, one loved one or stranger at a time.

Listening can be a challenge. I was getting some things at the hardware store a while back, and when I got to the clerk, she started scanning my things and said, “Hello, how are you today?” I said, “I’m fine, thank you very much. How are you today?” Still scanning, she said, “I’m fine, thanks. How are you today?” I almost said, “I’m fine, thanks. How are you today?” But I resisted, knowing I could have done the same thing—asking about your day while busy going about mine.

This week the Super Adults gathered on the parking lot for lunch and a program—the lunch is always delicious, and the program, always very interesting. If you want to find out more about Super Adults, a wonderful community within and beyond Laurel Heights, you can reach out to the church office.

Thursday the group heard beekeeper David Wood explain his craft. Meanwhile I was a busy bee myself—outside with the group, then in my office, then back outside; coming and going, occasionally catching part of the beekeeper’s presentation. At one point I dipped into his lecture just as he was saying what sounded like an advertisement:

“So let’s go eat a lot of honey. Then we’ll all be fat and happy. And all we’ll want to do is lie around and do nothing.” I thought to myself, That is the strangest sales pitch I think I’ve ever heard. Then I heard the next sentence, and realized he was talking about bees, not humans:

“So let’s go eat a lot of honey. Then we’ll all be fat and happy. And all we’ll want to do is lie around and do nothing. So we find a tree, gather on a nice branch, and swarm for a few hours.”

“Be quick to listen,” James writes in the section of his letter Karen read with us just now. But I know as well as you do that there’s nothing quick about learning to listen. The imperative in James is short—four words; the task, the art, the discipline that goes with it, is life-long.

Parents, on average, spend less than ten minutes a day listening to their children. Children and youth, meanwhile, spend seven and a half hours a day on average with electronic devices, often with earbuds blocking out other distractions, such as the voices of parents.

A 24-hour news cycle claims our continuous partial attention, often concerning us just vaguely enough that we set the news aside until we pick it up again a while later, only to set it aside again in the same way as before, the news cycle becoming a cycle of dabbling in discouragement.

Be quick to listen? We are a society that is quick to do just about everything but listen. James is calling the Jesus community to a different life, a life of listening that leads to doing. But how?

Let me suggest a path.

First: take a Sabbath from sound, and practice listening to nothing. That is, make some silence, as we did just earlier with Laura and the children. Turn off car radio, tv, apps on the phone, the phone; and in time, with practice, the voices and distractions and to do lists in your head as well.

And take in—even if it’s just for a few minutes at first, or a minute, or a moment—what over the last hundred years has become one of the rarest commodities on the planet: silence . . .

Having cultivated an open space within our minds, our hearts, our spirits, we can then turn more readily to listen to another person, another melody, another need beyond ourselves.

In time perhaps we begin to move from continuous partial attention to purposeful full attention until more and more “How are you?” is a question untied to any other task. And so is the listening for an answer beyond “Fine, thanks.”

Likewise, when listening begins from a place of silence, “How is the world?” begins to happen with intention, with openness and concern, with a willingness, a readiness to respond.

Listen to silence, taking a brief Sabbath from sound. Let that silence lead to purposeful listening to loved ones, to the world. Until we’ve inverted T.S. Eliot’s description: Where shall the Word be found, where shall the Word resound? Here . . . where there has been enough silence.

Finally, here’s a marvelous thing: listen for the divine whisper beneath what we hear in the voices of others. The Jewish mystical tradition of bat kol teaches that God’s voice is birthed through other voices. Bat kol is, literally, the daughter of a voice. Beneath someone’s answer to “How are you?” beneath the clamor of a noisy, needy world, listen for that bat kol, that divine voice, the Spirit gifting you with both guidance for responding and the grace to heed that guidance and respond in that way.

Where would God have us turn with our encouragement, our compassion, our gestures of hope and joy, with our delicate but durable demonstrations that God is love, and regardless of appearances sometimes to the contrary is silently working for good in us, in each other, and in the world? Elie Wiesel has gifted us with this assurance: Everything becomes possible by the mere presence of someone who knows how to listen, to love, and to give of themselves.

Two summers ago Vacation Bible School took us to outer space, journeying to the planets, and to other galaxies, celebrating the God of the universe. You may remember that this whole building was decorated for the occasion, including a big poster of Jupiter on the west wall of the gym. One day the children played a game in which one child was blindfolded, turned in circles a couple of times, then, with the help of the group, guided across the gym to touch that poster of Jupiter. The catch was that only voices could be used to guide the blindfolded person across the gym.

You can imagine how that went each time: A cacophony of voices shouting to the one in the blindfold: Go left! Go right! Now go straight! Left! Straight, straight, straight. Right . . . When the child reached the far wall and lifted their hand to touch Jupiter everyone cheered, they all crossed the gym floor again, and another child took a turn.

One little girl was blindfolded, then began listening for cues. Go left! She went right. Go right! She went left, or simply paused, uncertain which way was right. She clearly didn’t know her left from her right.

As I think about the year and a half we’ve been through, her predicament provides a very accurate analogy. We’re hearing voices from all directions, and not sure which to follow. Not sure we know left from right, up from down, backward from forward.

Go left! Go right! Go forward! Go backward! Be more cautious! Be more courageous! Open up! Close down! Go faster! Go slower! Required. Recommended. Encouraged. Suggested. Left! Right! Straight! Over, under, around, and through!

The little girl was not making much headway toward Jupiter, and seemed to be growing confused and embarrassed. She must have been about ready to yank off the blindfold and quit the game.

Then suddenly she heard a voice above the shouts of the other children. An older boy in the group sensed she was having trouble with directions. Soon his voice was rising above the cluttered shouts of the others.

The girl in the blindfold heard this voice say, “Follow my voice.” “Come this way.” And she did. The boy backed toward Jupiter as he continued speaking to her, and she cautiously moved in the direction of the voice she was hearing. Soon she had crossed the gym floor, reached up, and touched the poster of the giant planet. A slight smile crossed her face.

Go left! Go right! Faster with all this! Slower! Be careful! Stop being so cautious! I know a voice that waits to be listened to beneath other voices, maybe to be born from among those voices, a voice that would lead us to one another, lead us across the chasms that divide us, lead us across our discouragement or confusion with the challenges in our work and our world just now; lead us across the gym floor to a planet that’s a bit smaller than Jupiter, a living planet that waits to be touched by a tentative but courageous and compassionate hand, one loved one or stranger at a time.