Another Way to Listen
A Sermon Given
by Rev. Roberta Nelson
July 19, 1998
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
When you learn "the other way to listen," you can hear
wildflower seeds burst, rocks murmuring, and hills singing. As the
story says, it takes practice and you can't be in a hurry. In fact, most
of us never hear those things at all and maybe even if we tried, the
sounds would not come. This story is really about listening with a
"third ear." Listening is not easy in our society. We are bombarded
with distractions of all kinds. These distractions keep us from
experiencing the sounds that would/could feed our souls. Even in the
midst of writing this sermon, my neighbors were mowing their lawns
-- a most unpleasant distraction.
One of the dominant religious searches of our time is a
rekindling of an interest in things spiritual. We seek a deeper more
meaningful life. The old hymn, Listen, Listen, Listen to My Heart's
Song, has much to say to the journey we are on. We need to pay
attention to our own song, to listen to the movement and rhythms of
our lives. If we can learn to believe that spirituality is a continuing
revelation, unfolding in time many things that have not been known
before, if we can learn to believe that spirituality has its own rhythms
and cycles and repetitions; if we can learn to believe spirituality has
its own forms and contexts and if we can learn to believe that
spirituality is mysterious and sacred and awe filled, then we can begin
to free ourselves from old stereotypes of the word and open ourselves
to the potential and possibility of listening to "our heart's song."
When the young boy and the old man went into the desert,
there was an awareness that they did not see the land with the same
eyes, smell with the same nose. The land sang to them different
songs in accordance with their years and experience. So will it be
with all of us if we serve as companions to one another on the
journey.
Robert Bellah, in The Good Society, writes "From the time we
were children we were told to 'pay attention.'" We have been
receiving that message ever since. We may have shrugged it off;
there are few things more important. Paying attention is how we use
our psychic energy which determines the kind of self we are
cultivating, the kind of person we are learning to be." These words
were written in the context of the breakdown of participatory
democracy but they apply to our interior lives as well. When we are
really paying attention, we are calling on all our resources to help us
pay attention to the larger context of our lives. Rainer Maria Rilke
counsels "be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try
to love the questions themselves liked locked rooms -- do not seek
the answers; that cannot be given you because you would not be able
to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions
now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along
some distant day to the answer."
We need to develop the capacity to sit back, be still and allow
ourselves to be receptive to what is addressing us. Gentle active
looking, careful active listening are starting points.
In recent years several religious educators have written of the
need to examine the way and how of what churches teach. Angus
MacLean and Sophia Fahs asked those questions of Unitarian and
Universalists in the 30's and 40's -- resulting in a revolutionary
curriculum for our churches. However, we do not always follow their
implicit intent of teaching the whole child and often resort to the
more traditional modes of teaching. It is after all what most of us are
familiar with. William Ellery Channing wrote "The great end in
religious instruction is not to stamp our minds invisibly upon the
young but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes but
to look inquiringly and steadily with their own, not to give them a
definite amount of knowledge but to inspire a fervent love of truth;
not to form an outward regularity; but to touch inward springs."
Channing was advocating a teaching style of drawing out
rather than pouring in, of making students (I would say regardless of
age) agents rather than recipients of knowledge, getting them to see
for themselves more than telling them what to see. As teachers of
people of all ages, it is important to trust the students' innate capacity
to learn. Augustine wrote of "the truth that resides within."
In his new book, Educating for Life, Dr. Thomas Groome
advocates strongly for the idea that "spirituality has everything to do
with education . . . [I]t should be the leaven that vitalizes the whole
enterprise." He names a chapter of his book "Our Hearts are
Restless." In his book Tom Groome tells the story of being a visiting
professor at a seminary in Asia. The story involves one of his
students:
"Professor X's body language was an alert from the
beginning. He was not going to like what I had to say about
'education for ministry' . . . He sat through my first three sessions
with folded arms and a scowl . . . As he left the third session (I had
six more to go), he paused just long enough to tell me, with poorly
disguised disdain, that he disagreed with my understanding of
spirituality."
He attended no further sessions, but called the night before
Tom was to leave for home asking to meet to him for breakfast. Tom
says "I finally agreed -- with the enthusiasm one has for a root canal.
Even before we were seated he was talking down to me. The
conversation was not making much progress, when Tom . . . 'On the
spur of the moment, I decided to gamble.' I excused my interrupting
him and queried, 'Professor X, may I ask you a rather personal
question?' . . . Looking him in the eye I asked slowly and with an air
of gravity, 'What are some of your own deepest desires in life?' and
paused. He was visibly perplexed, and I became worried. Had I
crossed inappropriate boundaries? . . . Slowly he said, 'I'm not sure
. . . what you mean.'
" 'Well,' I said, 'clearly you are a person of strong passions.
What fires them? What are the longings of your heart -- for yourself,
for your family, for your students? And where do you find God in the
midst of it all?' . . . During the silence that followed, I became aware
of my own breathing but managed to wait. Then I noticed him
welling up with tears, and my own sentiments were changing too. I
began to feel simpatico with him now -- I could see the reflections
of myself in him and remembered that I knew his pain well.
Whatever else, our game was over."
"Eventually he found his voice, and he talked -- his
childhood relationships with parents and siblings, conversion to
Christianity, marriage and children, entering a career in ministry,
commitment to scholarship, experiences of graduate school, work
now at the seminary, trying to balance family and career. He told all
as if trying to discern how God was working his life, in the twists and
turns of his faith journey. He said he loved being able to talk like this
and kept asking me to stay longer. I listened as long as possible, with
occasional questions, and shared a few echoing stories of my own.
We spoke and shared like brothers. Few spiritual conversations have
touched me so deeply."
"I doubted we would ever meet again, but was sure I had left
behind -- at the far side of the world -- a soul friend. I knew we had
changed each other a little."
Worship and education are at the core of our religious
community. Each plays a significant role in nurturing our spirituality.
The church and its leaders/teachers make it possible to nurture and
engage people as spiritual beings. The community that we strive for
can place a spiritual vision at its core. There are ways of being with
one another that nourish spirituality and ways that care for our souls.
Our spiritual nurture depends on the values that permeate our way of
being together.
The human heart is the reservoir for our spiritual longings.
The church must take seriously its role in fostering truth, goodness,
beauty, wonder and justice. Spirituality is not esoteric and removed,
it is lived in the everyday. It is lived congruently within our faith
tradition.
If the church does not take on the task of raising the ultimate
questions, heighten awareness, and seek justice who will? A vibrant
spirituality encourages us to integrate all the bits and pieces of our
lives, helping us to live a full and balanced life. It nurtures a sense of
purpose, giving meaning and coherence to our sense of what is right
and just. It helps us find purpose beyond ourselves and live with
integrity.
Groome asks us to contemplate what it would be like if
Respect, Responsibility and Reverence permeated our lives and the
lives of our community, churches, and schools.
Our Unitarian Universalist Purposes and Principles have
become important guidelines for us. They need to become a living,
learning document. We need to ask ourselves what would it means
to begin to live with them and act on them.
Here are some questions that we might ask ourselves;
How do we revere the ordinary and notice the mystery in life?
How do we weigh and probe the depths of life?
What inspires our hearts, raises our spirits, stimulates
our imaginations, fascinates our minds?
How can this community be enhanced to nurture our spirituality?
Learning to listen to ourselves can be where we discover
creative, healing power. It can hold us, cherish us and lead to the
divinity within. Maya Angelou writes in Even The Stars Look
Lonesome "It is in the interludes between being in company that we
talk to ourselves. In the silence, we listen to ourselves. Then we ask
questions of ourselves. We describe ourselves to ourselves and in our
quietude we may even hear the voice of god."
How much do we need to listen
Listening for truth so that we may learn wisdom,
Listening for wisdom so that we may love,
Listening for love so that we may be just,
Listening for justice so that we may live fully.
May we be more patient and do more listening
so that we may proceed with courage and compassion.
Adapted from Charles A. Gaines
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