WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT HEAR ITSELF

 A few years ago, as I was finishing up my seminary degree, I served on a ministerial search committee. One evening over dinner, the committee interviewed a fine man. True, his opinions about women’s service to the church differed drastically from mine, but heck, I was idealistic and optimistic. I had seen many people, including pastors, move from narrow ideas about women to adopt kinder, more tolerant views. Surely, it could be done again.

 

As I ate delicious, garlicky pasta, a fellow committee member asked our prospective candidate, “Barb here will soon graduate from seminary. How will you use her in the church?”

 

The candidate admitted this was a problem; he was honestly unsure. I dedicated my gaze to serious pasta picking. Here we go again, I thought. He appreciated my training but felt firmly that Scripture prohibits female leadership, generally speaking.

 

Now this was a nice guy. He had a good sense of humor and an easy style of communication. He was likeable and had a great wife. So even as he talked I took heater, believing there was room down the road for dialogue. I said, “I know that we stand poles apart on the subject of what women can do in the church, but I just wonder if you are open to discussion on the matter?”

 

“When you ask that,” he responded, “if you mean, can you come into my office and talk about the issue, of course. If you mean, will I change my mind? Never.”

 

And do you know what? He was right. I did, and he did not. Now, this is not pastor-bashing time. This good man is not my subject. Well, that is not entirely fair to say. I meantfor this man to be my subject. I meant to say that his reaction exhibited a common human tendency: to hear rather than listen. But as he and I talked about my printing this story, I suddenly faced a new slant—that of my own behavior.

 

How noble of me, really, that in that old meeting strong with garlic and differing points of view, I wanted him to listen to me. The truth is, I wanted him to agreewith me. I heard him. I knew his doctrinal position well. I grew up with it after all; by, in, under, and finally, mostly against it. But while I wished his view were more expansive, I also wished not to alter my own. He heard. I heard. But who listened?

 

I very much wanted to write about hisclosed mind. Only, in review, I am confronted by my own. The only comfort to me is that the potential for a closed mind is virtually epidemic. Who has not realized that once convinced of something—even justifiably convinced—we frequently stop testing and start guarding our view.

 

With the exception of a very few moral absolutes, most ideas deserve polishing. If they are overly protected from the rub of influence, we have likely moved from the position of a good mind to that of a closed mind. Like a New York City shop on Columbus Avenue with bars drawn across the windows and door, that mind is well stocked, and it is safe, but it is closed. Hearing is safe. But if we hope to listen, we have nothing to fear but “hear” itself.

 

Mortimer Adler, editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica, lecturer, philosopher, and author of as many thoughtful books as there are rings on a healthy tree, points out this: When headlines about international dialogue read, “CONVERSATION DETERIORATING,” we began to worry. “NEGOTIATIONS COMPLETELY BROKEN DOWN,” alerts us to the probability of war. In other words, the absence of dialogue is an absence of hope.

 

How perfectly officials of the U.S. State Department demonstrated Adler’s point on the eve of the Persian Gulf War. Just before flying off for “talks” with Iraq, one negotiator, waving goodbye and flexing national resolve, said, “We will talk, but we will not compromise.” Translated: “We will hear but not listen.”

 

Pardon me? Before we even begin, we plandeafness? Who is surprised (whether or not warranted, I am no expert on international negotiations) that our headlines soon ran, CONVERSATIONS COMPLETELY BROKEN DOWN. Talk, yes. Hear, yes. Listen? Not at all. Please note, when listening is neglected and hearing is the planned response, talk is always personally safe, and perfectly predictable, but fruitless. Not so noble. Not so good.

 

Too often potential conversational conflict is approached like a petty dictator protecting his domain. Closed minds and closed-minded rulers both suffer a certain paranoia. Someone is always out to “get” them. Opinions outside an approved party line are considered inflammatory; they set off alarm systems and frantic defense troops rush to quell the riot. Petty dictators and closed minds both expel offenders. They threaten and cry “poor me” when opposed.

 

No, I do not fear information “out there” threatening our precious opinions nearly as much as I do the absence of a listening ear in our families, marriages, friendships, communications, churches, and schools. To “hear” where “listen” belongs, worries me. It is “hear” itself we need to fear. Listening dialogues, and without it nothing is left but isolation, animosity, or war. A real person strives for excellent comprehension, not victory, welcomes the experience of learning, and safely connects with other imperfect people. Rare, true, but noble.

 

A Little “Listen” Lesson

 

In a Listen and Learn tape obtained from a public library, Dr. Adler cites a Sperry Corporation study. Of the four basic language skills, adults use 46 percent of their time listening.Of course, it is the first of all language skills used. In infancy we hear symbols, tone, style of language. Later, we learn to speak. Some say our first words mimic our oldest idea of language, the heartbeat: Ma-ma, Da-da, Ya-ya, thump-thump.

 

Speaking, once mastered, requires 30 percent of our time, reading, if we still do that, uses about 15 percent of an adult’s time, and writing,that venue schools require us to practice more than any of the rest, occupies only 9 percent of an adult’s time. Listening comprises 46 percent of our language work. How many listening lessons do you remember?

 

I cannot forget an early and most indelible one that came my way in Naha, the capital city of Okinawa. In this case, a fellow Air Force wife was my instructor; and it happened in a small company of women shopping. In fact, if I could return to an unchanged Naha, lo, all these many years since 1961, I could identify the broken spot of sidewalk where my eyes fell and burned while the gentle woman’s lesson struck. It was a doozy. Not deliberately but definitely. Lisa wearied of me. Her real name was not Lisa, but she wasa few years my senior and very many years wiser.

 

I was twenty-one. I was a happy, multidimensional (read ‘unfocused’) woman with one infant son. My vast experience included approving parents, fun high school, one semester of college, major ice-skating, and marriage at age eighteen. Not much had come along yet to knock some of me out of me. As our group talked through the Naha morning, I failed (they did not) to notice that every story they told reminded me of one of my own. Down to the proper storage of furs, I contributed my memories, my advice, my opinion, my expertise, my slant, and my broad knowledge. I was having a wonderful time, conversing, hearing, listening—listening? Then came the lesson. Quiet, lovely Lisa told a story that, naturally, reminded me of something I should contribute. I jumped to edit her conclusion. How good of me. She started to rebut. Then, piercing me with the sharpness and accuracy of her assessment and her dark eyes, she said, “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You know everything.”

 

What I knew mostly was that at that moment I needed to evaporate. It would have been a mercy, really. I was pinned to the obvious as surely as an insect is pinned in a collector’s glass case. I “heard” in order to speak. I did not bother to catch. I did not know to hit the ball back to a speaker, or to ask questions about them, to encourage their story to grow and unfold because I got genuinely absorbed in it. I was a master at self-check. I thought every story reflected my own image. My attitude and behavior announced that. I made myself the subject of every conversation . . .even though that had not consciously occurred to me. I needed Lisa that day. I wish she had been less accurate for my ego’s sake, but my growth needed the lesson she stuck through my heart.

 

Conclusion

 

Several years ago, a large opportunity arrived in our small town. A noted Catholic priest accepted a challenge from a local fundamentalist clergyman to debate the inspiration of Scripture. David and I decided to attend. We arrived as an explanation of formal debate was concluding. 

 

The local minister approached the podium to present his argument, and we slipped into the back row of seats. A hundred or more people sat between us, and an excellent presentation. Both speakers did well. They respected the rules of debate, they were prepared, posed, and powerful throughout presentations and rebuttal. I was glad to have come. The Bible-schooled fundamentalist held his own beautifully against the scholarly Jesuit.

 

He did, but his people did not. They held their own till room lights lifted and questions were permitted from the floor. Not even a bright room dimmed the powerful wattage of opposition burning in this crowd. How proud they were of their secure tenets. How ready they were with barbed and pushy question, the sort that say, “Whadya think about that one, buddy, huh, huh?” It became quite clear that every question was a trap. Yes! Yes!Their postures and voices signaled, Let us defeat this calm scholar!

 

I do not remember a single inquiry that concerned his stated position, not a question that required a defense of his argument. There were plenty about his eternal security, about his Roman view of truth. But even those were rhetorical. He was not questioned; he was on the rack of a fundamentalist inquisition. And let me tell you, these people were good at it. I felt like someone secretly rolled a Woody Allen movie and that soon we would all start laughing at the not-so-subtle joke before us. This was one, wasn’t it?

 

It was not. I do not know if the priest had any supporters there, but clearly perfected Protestants came en masse to lynch a Catholic priest and vindicate the Lord. A fine debate fell under foot, trampled by Christian storm troops. My emotions smoldered in sorrow and rage. Largely, I suppose, because I was raised under fine fundamental teaching. These people spitting anger and pride were, somehow, my people. They were emotionally over an edge. Of course, so was I. I clutched the edges of my seat and worked against fury. Fortunately, shock held me motionless.

 

The guest, the pariah, the unacceptable man of the collar, kept cool. And then it was over. But for the exiting self-congratulatory chatter, it was over. I sat, watching the saints file out. The speakers were at the front of the room, receiving people. I spoke briefly to the fundamentalist; then the priest and I shook hands.

 

“I need to say how sorry I am for the way you were treated here tonight,” I said. “Theologically, I am related to this audience, but I am grieved by their behavior. I truly apologize.”

 

He took my hands in his and patted out comfort. “Oh, my dear,” he said kindly. “Don’t worry for a moment about me. You know, you just learn to expect this sort of behavior from this kind of people.”

 

This kind of people? Sadly, he was right. “CONVERSATION DETERIORATING, WAR LIKELY.” This group rightly defended a position. Rightly, perhaps, but not nobly. They proved bold but not admirable. They heard but were not listening. Listening is an art perfected by people who accept voices other than their own, who will catch well, who correctly interpret signals sent by another. 

 

I am reminded now, as I type of Umberto Eco’s line from “Name of the Rose:” The crusades were carried out in virtuous bad faith.”

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