The Listening Life
There are several great reviews of this book around, including this one that convinced me I wanted to read it. Ironically, I believe it was the idea of a listening God that interested me. Finishing the book, it’s the idea of a listening Janet that inspires me.
How many of us listen well? Recently I commended someone for being a good listener, mainly because the person keeps quiet while others talk. This is one attribute of a good listener, but not the only one. It’s even possible to keep quiet while others talk and not be a good listener at all. You may be judging them, or internally rephrasing everything they say in terms of your own personal grid of meaning, or simply waiting for them to finish so you can wrench the conversation down a completely different path, or — perhaps — not even listening to them at all.
The Listening Life helps to guide its readers into a fuller imagining of what it means to listen well. The first five chapters explore the way God listens, and how we can listen in return — for instance, through prayer, scripture, and creation. These chapters are illuminating, but the ones I liked best came when author Adam McHugh turned to how we listen to others, to people in pain, to our own lives, and to our culture. I had two favorite chapters. The first, “Listening to Others,” offers some fine insight into the ways we might be listening less well than we think we are, and what we may be missing. “Character building is always expensive to the ego,” writes McHugh, just before offering some questions to help us evaluate our motivations in conversation. He points out, “The opposite of a listening heart is not a talking heart but a selfish heart.” I have grown stingy about book purchases, relying on the library whenever possible, and often reselling books I am forced to buy. In this chapter, I gave up and started underlining and bracketing passages I wanted to remember. This book is a keeper.
My other favorite chapter is “A Society of Reverse Listening.” To give you a whiff of what it’s about, it begins this way:
Our church signs lay out the usual pattern. Come this Sunday for our message: “Where Is God When It Hurts?” This week’s sermon: “Abraham and Isaac: The Untold Story.” Sunday morning at 9 and 11: “Your One True Love.” The expectation is clear: if you come to church, you are going to listen. The church’s job is to preach, to teach the Bible and to share God’s opinions on the issues of the day, and your job is to listen to our message. We have a pulpit, and you have ears.
Imagine if the pattern was reversed. What if, instead of coming to church to be preached to, people came to church to be heard? What if the body of believers was known less as a preaching community and more as a listening community?
This struck a chord with me. No matter how good the preaching, the Sunday service is largely an exercise in being a passive audience. Of course, McHugh is talking not just about worship services, but about Christian culture at large, which is often perceived to have much to say, but not much time or interest in listening. It’s not built into our structures because, perhaps, it’s not built into our values. But this last chapter offers an inspiring vision of how we could become better at listening instead of talking.
I recommend The Listening Life. Reading is, after all, an experience of extended listening, and this book offers any number of insights that are both deep and useful, related with gentleness and wit. It has already had an impact on my responses to the small circle of people who share my life, and it is inspiring despite McHugh’s acknowledgement that
The honest truth is that there is no glory in listening. There is more glory in talking about listening than there is in actually doing it. It is the New Year’s resolution of relationship disciplines. It is not glamorous, charismatic or dynamic. People who have been heard well aren’t even aware of it half the time.
Yet when you commit to go deep into listening, you will find that listening “speaks” in ways far more powerful than talking ever could.
