Listening, Loving, and Sharing

I am feeling very conflicted as I write this blog. By the time you are reading this it will be just days before Election Day–you know that thing that is happening November 5 that has consumed the airwaves and our conversations for months. I feel I should be commenting on the upcoming election, but at the same time I don’t believe I can say anything that hasn’t already been said, unsaid, spun, tweeted, debated, and negated.

All I am going to say is I hope you will join me in these days leading up to, and after the election, in sincere prayer for our country, its leaders, and each other. In the words of Sikh activist and author, Valarie Kaur,

What I want to remind us all is that as much as we must fight for our convictions and stand for what is just, remember that all those people who vote against you are not disappearing after Election Day or Inauguration Day. We have to find a way to live together still. The only way to birth a multiracial democracy is if we hold up a vision of a future that leaves no one behind not even our worst opponents.

Don’t underestimate the power of prayer, especially now.

I do want to share with you three changes I have noticed in myself from these months of political conversations and friendly(?) debates. I have learned the paramount importance of listening, really listening. I have developed a budding hope that unity can be a reality if I’m curious enough to hear other’s stories. Lastly, I have a renewed belief in the power of love.

I have been in conversations where listening and curiosity and love were there and where listening and curiosity and love weren’t there.  The outcomes were dramatically different.

Listening is a lost art in our world today. Hearing is easy, but listening takes discipline. To really listen to someone takes patience, not pre-suppositions. To really listen to someone takes openness, not offense. To really listen to someone means we need to have a willingness to be curious, not correct. These are all very difficult things when passions run high.

Kaur says, “Deep listening is an act of surrender. You risk being changed by what you hear.”  She talks about spaces of deep listening and how they aren’t modeled for us in the world around us. We have to create those spaces.

She also emphasizes the importance of curiosity. A curiosity that causes us to enter into each other’s stories.

If you come out and you really wonder “Why?”, beneath the slogans and the soundbites, you’ll hear the person’s story and you’ll see their wound. You’ll see their grief. You’ll see their rage. You might not agree with it, but I’ve come to understand that there are no such things as monsters in this world, only human beings who are wounded, who act out of their fear or insecurity or rage. That does not make them any less dangerous, but once we see their wound, they lose their power over us. And we get to ask ourselves: How do we want to take that information into what we do next?

Everyone has a story. Unity comes when we can enter into each other’s stories.

Then there is love. We hear it over and over again about how we are to love. In Scripture we hear, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The Beatles told us, “All you need is love.” And “Love conquers all” is an age-old slogan. We hear it so much that it becomes rote and loses its profound meaning.

Now, more than ever, we need to figure out just what loving means to us and commit to the practice of it.

Kaur calls it “revolutionary love.”  

I invite people to take their wounds and their opponents’ wounds into spaces of re-imagination – of imaging an outcome, a policy, a relationship that leaves no one outside of our circle of care, not even “them.”
When we invite people to practice revolutionary love, we always ask, “What is your role in this season of your life?” …. Whatever you choose, it can be a vital practice of love, of revolutionary love. And if all of us are playing our role—not more, not less—then together we’re creating the culture shift that we so desperately need.

So, this week let’s do some listening, loving, sharing, and praying.

You never know what could happen!
Joan

**If you agree that listening, loving, and sharing in each other’s stories are some of the most powerful ways to begin to transform our world, I hope you will consider joining us this Advent for a three-week series called Advent Story Weaving.

Story Weaving is an exercise wherein you can learn to harvest and incorporate the wisdom found in the stories of others. The practice of Story Weaving provides opportunities for participants to actively listen to each other with intense curiosity, to listen without judgment and analysis, to share stories individually and create stories together, and to explore how we are all interconnected through our stories.

See Advent Story Weaving’s event page for details and to register.