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Listen. If someone says that one word to us it's a summons to pay attention. Listen. Whatever else you're thinking about stop it. Whatever you're doing drop it. And the way the word is said can often be a clue as well. Is it a conspiratorial, "Listen", with the promise of gossip. Is it in imperative mood because what is going to be said is important, significant, "Listen". Is it confidentiality, something sensitive and not to be said too loudly is about to be spoken.
There's a self- help and personal development industry out there training and teaching us to listen well, to listen carefully, to listen effectively by paying attention, silencing our inner chatter and stilling the instinctive urge to compete in the word games we sometimes call conversation. Recently I've been thinking of the power implications of good listening, and of non listening. To listen to another is to be silent and to receive this other person;s presence rather than project my own. Not that listening is passive, far from it. It is an active form of being present, but in a self-effacing way. P T Forsyth says that in prayer "our egoism retires, and into the clearance there comes with our Father, our brother". I think that's also a good description of genuine listening, when our ego retires, leaves room, and into the space we invite our sister and brother, friend and colleague, enemy or stranger.
Listening is a disciplined and generous form of hospitality. To waste precious self-promoting time being silent, present and aware of this other person is one of the true gifts of the hospitable heart. By listening I affirm the reality, the significance and the sheer human thereness of this other person. I used the word 'waste' intentionally. To listen to another person is to relinquish my self-interest in this encounter, and to seek instead to spend time, to give attention and to offer care to this person who has, just this minute, walked into this time and this space in my life.
I read the Gospels not just to hear what Jesus says, but to hear what he doesn't say. Jesus listening is as impressive and redemptive as Jesus speaking. Time and time again, Jesus hears the heart, listens to the emotions, is attentive to the needs, is utterly and at times exhaustingly present to all kinds of folk; this woman at the well, that curiously pedantic Scribe Nicodemus, this heartbroken Roman soldier desperate to save his lassie, that woman flung like rubbish on the ground in front of him while they all picked up stones. And I want to be a better listener. Listening is a pre-requisite of compassion, understanding, love, kindness. Listening, paying attention, being present and available, requiring my ego to retire to make room for this other person, learning the key Christian discipline of shutting up - who would have thought Christian discipleship could soar or sink on the basis of intentional listening. But it does. To be Christlike is to listen, because through the Incarnation, the Passion and Death of Christ, God has listened to the profoundest depths and furthest reaches of our broken and beautiful humanity. When we listen, we love and give ourselves for the blessing, healing and wholeness of this person whose place in the world, right now, is beside me.
I love Vermeer's Jesus in the Home of Martha and Mary. It's an interesting question who is speaking and who is listening; who is present to whom, paying attention to whom; whose inner voices are so loud they can't hear what's going on around them, or what's going on within the hearts of the others.
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