Finding God in Deep Listening

Listening… in the story of the transfiguration in Mark 9:2-8 we hear an injunction of the divine, a voice from the clouds that said definitively, “This is my Beloved… listen to him.”

We’ll come back to the concept of listening to Jesus, for now let’s talk about listening in general. Here are some interesting facts about listening:

• 85% of what we have learned is through listening
• 75% of the time, we are distracted, preoccupied or forgetful.
• After listening to someone talk, we can immediately recall about 50% of what was said. Even less if we didn’t like the subject or the person!
• One hour later, we remember less than 20% of what we heard.
• Less than 2% of the population has had formal education on how to listen.
• We listen at 125-250 words per minute, but think at 1000-3000 words per minute.
• Most people are uncomfortable with silence and can only last less than 10 seconds before having to ask a question or say something to break the silence.

I’ve heard it said that people these days have forgotten how to have a conversation. With social media, texting and email, much of our interaction happens electronically. We especially worry about whether our younger generation knows how to have a meaningful conversation with another person. In sticking with the theme of the day, we must remember that a truly good conversation includes not just talking but listening as well.

Joyce Rupp, in her book “Return to the Root,” comments that “fully attentive people are becoming an endangered species.” Most folks at the service yesterday agreed with this.

These are some clues that let us know someone is truly listening to us:

• They make eye contact
• Body language is open and receiving
• Attentive, stay with you
• Don’t interrupt
• Ask pertinent questions
• Meet you where you are
• Don’t try to fix it
• Are non-judgmental
• Don’t shut you down or make it all about them

When we are blessed to have someone listen deeply to us we feel seen, respected, cared for, and connected. We draw strength from their presence and often find insight, wisdom and healing from the conversation.

I appreciate greatly what Mark Nepo, in his book Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, has to say about listening:

So, at the deepest level, the most essential level, listening entails a constant effort to feel that moment where everything touches everything else; a constant effort to live below the sheer fact of things. This fundamental listening invokes a commitment to keep what is true before us, so we might be touched by the life-force in all things. Such listening opens us to the never-ending art of tuning our inner person to the mysteries that surround us. We do this through the work of honoring what we experience, through the work of keeping what is true visible.

This reading reminds us that truly deep listening takes us under the surface of things in the place where we are one, where we are known, seen and companioned through life. Listening is an art made beautiful by being present and aware.

We all need someone who will listen to us like this. We need the good friend we can vent to who will love us anyway and bring us back to ourselves. We need the mentor who knows how to listen attentively to our struggles and helps to lead us through them, sometimes by sheer presence alone. Sometimes we need the therapist to help us grieve, understand or heal ourselves.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal last week about the lack of counselors in our schools (17% of high schools don’t even have a counselor) at a time when anxiety and depression rates are ramping up among teens. One solution schools are turning to is a chatbot that is part AI and part humans trained in psychology, social work and crisis-line support. Students interact with the AI-powered companion named Sonny when they are stressed or worried. Many students feel it is a judgment-free zone.

At Berryville High School in Berryville Arkansas, there are two counselors for 565 students. When they brought Sonny to the school, 175 students signed up for the service. About 53% text Sonny several times a month. Through the program they noticed an increase in texting just before testing periods and so are now looking for ways to offer extra emotional support during those times. The school has also seen a 26% drop in student behavior infractions since the students started talking to Sonny.

It's possibly a sad state of affairs that some people are turning to AI for emotional support, but if it is working then why not. Certainly, it is better than nothing and it reinforces for me how essential it is to have someone to be a good listener and have good listeners we can turn to.

What about listening for God? That’s a trickier one. It helps if we have some quiet time to listen for the still small voice that is talked about in 1 Kings. It helps if we can filter out the ego-colored filter we see and hear everything through. But even then, the voice of the divine isn’t always clear.

Rose Mary Dougherty, in her book Group Spiritual Direction, tells a story about a woman who had been seeing her for spiritual direction for about ten years. During one session the woman asked three separate times, “What do you think? Is this what God wants?” and Rose Mary had responded to the question with another question: “What do you think? Why is it so important to be sure? Are you able to be with God in your questions? What have you said to God about it? What do you think would happen if you just tried out this decision before you were clear about what God wanted?”

After about an hour of going around and around on this the woman exclaimed in frustration, “You used to tell me, Rose Mary! You used to be able to tell me whether something was of God!”

Rose Mary said she knew the woman was right, she had often responded to the woman’s need to know. This time, however, she had no answer. After a long silenced, Rose Mary was truthful: “I just don’t know anymore. The more I listen to myself and others the less certain I am of what God wants in a given situation. Sometimes I don’t have a clue about what’s really going on in me or where something is coming from. All I know is that I have come to trust God more in my unknowing that I did in my knowing. I am not always comfortable in this place, but it’s the only place I can be.”

Listening for the voice of the divine involves an openness in the midst of unknowing and a deep trust in the God who is Love.

But I’m going with probably 99% of us aren’t great at listening for God, which perhaps is why Mark has a voice out of the clouds tell us (not just the disciples) to listen to Jesus.

So, let’s get back to Jesus and the transfiguration. Whether it really happened or not, the message the author of Mark seems to want to share is that his experience of Jesus is one of someone who is as spiritually significant as Moses and Elijah – the two greatest prophets of Judaism. The transfiguration story even resembles the story of Moses going up Mt. Sinai to confer with God and the people said they couldn’t look at him when he returned because he was so radiant from being in the light of God. And Elijah was so amazing that he never actually died, the Old Testament says he was carried into the heavens by a chariot of fire. Jesus has just joined these ranks. And in case you weren’t clear about what that meant, Mark has a voice coming out of the cloud making sure everyone knows they had better listen to him!

What was the message of Jesus that they needed (that WE need) to listen to? I mean deep listening, really paying attention, taking into our souls and allowing it to change and guide us. Everything Jesus taught and the way he lived his life conveyed a deep spiritual connection to the divine. We each have different things we need to hear from Jesus at different times. Sometimes I needed to hear I was loved and enough, sometimes I needed to be strengthened for a difficult path, sometimes I needed to remember that the spiritual journey always includes dying to something old and living into something new, sometimes I need to remember beauty, love, awe and joy.

What would Jesus say to us for this day and age? What is the message we need to listen to. The authors of the Bible couldn’t say it overtly because the scrolls would’ve been destroyed. But the words and actions of Jesus say to me: welcome to the resistance – resistance against the injustice and oppression couched in the rhetoric of laws, resistance to corrupt authorities, and resistance to those casting themselves as spiritual righteousness. These are the words we need to listen to in the weeks to come and I plan to flesh them out as we journey through Lent.

For today, I urge you to listen to one another, listen to the voice deep within, and listen to the words and spirit of Jesus who desired to bring wholeness to those in bondage.

Love & Light!

Kaye