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“HOW TO LISTEN…ALREADY MADE UP YOUR MIND”

In the play, “A Raisin in the Sun”,¹ written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1958, Lena Younger, the matriarch of the home, is again approached by her son, Walter Lee Jr., about a business deal he wants to enter into with a few of his friends. It is the purchase of a liquor store. All he needs is the money from the pension check due to arrive in the mail any day. In his mind this as an opportunity for the family to own something, to direct their future. He is convinced that having money was the key to the American dream. It was freedom. It always had been, and everybody knew it; everybody except them. And second to that it would be a fitting tribute to all that his father worked and died for. With the liquor store he can give up his job as a chauffer, his mother and wife would no longer have to work as domestics, his son could sleep in his own bedroom instead of on the living room sofa, and his wife could one day wear pearls around her neck.

This is the conversation he has been straining desperately to have with his mother for the past few months. But, Lena Younger does not see it that way. In the play she counters that they are simple, hard working people with no sensibilities about running a business. Besides, she is persuaded that being involved in the sale of liquor would not only dishonor the memory of her late husband, but also be a strike against her on her ledger in heaven. She has plans of doing something else with the money, something that will benefit them all in a practical and immediate way.

Yet, Walter Lee continues to argue his case day after day to no avail; regardless of whatever else is going on in the house. At one point in the drama Lena Younger cannot abide Walter Lee’s strident and persistent needling because there is a crisis brewing concerning Walter Lee’s wife. When Walter Lee yells asking the question, “Will somebody please listen to me today?”, she responds after a long pause with:

“I don’t ‘low no yellin’ in this house, Walter Lee, and you

know it – and there ain’t going to be no investing in

no liquor stores. I don’t aim to have to speak on that

again.”

And with that the discussion was closed, albeit only in her mind. With one swift declaration of never intending to talk about the store, Lena Younger …unwavering in her decision…closes down any further communication with her son who is equally immovable in his. Wielding her power as the matriarch, the keeper of the family myth, her word is law. No one dare to contradict or correct her. Arriving on the southside of Chicago from the Jim Crow south, having raised a family on a journeyman’s wages… all this has endowed her with the wisdom to know what is right for her family, hence, for each member without exception.

Lena Younger has seen a lot. She has endured more than she would care to remember. And her knowledge comes not from a textbook, but from her lived experience in a world that is as complex as she is confident. But what she doesn’t know is that when she speaks she is not listening. In fact, even in her silence she has drowned out the voices of those around her.

The drama continues with the four main characters, more to the point, two generations, struggling to get their point across; to be heard. It is the story of several people sharing a common heritage, a common space, holding differing perspectives due to life experiences, who essentially want the same thing(s). The solution to their dilemma does come, but painfully so. Impatience and hubris had kept them talking past each other.

Most of us spend well over 70% of our waking hours in verbal conversations. From receiving and offering simple “Hello’s” to hearing or reading complicated information for which we will be held accountable – or knowing that our lives will depend upon it – we are faced with the tasks of (1) understanding what is passing through our brains, and (2) deciding if and how it is worthwhile, useful. With that, we are forming opinions on a multitude of issues and ideas that communicate to other people who we are, what we believe, and what we stand for.

That I prefer writing with fountain pens to ballpoint pens may be of no consequence to any of you. But that I don’t believe that the Christian bible is inerrant and should be taken literally may be of first importance to you as minister of this Fellowship. I’ve made up my mind on a great number of thing; issues that may never affect you, and issues that most certainly will. It’s the same for each one of us. There are some things that we hold as true, sustainable, a matter of fact, workable; of greater or lesser importance. We’ve made up our minds. We have to! Because there is a lot of stuff in life that really, really matters. And when certain things start to break down and go awry it’s sort of nice to know that it’s not all falling on our head – as much as we can control things.

And I guess that where it all begins:

• having looked at the important questions

• separating the plausible from the implausible
• identifying the doable from the impossible
• and then finally making up your mind

We do this from our own frame of reference, our personal experiences, our passions and motivations. And it works, for us. Overwhelmingly so. But what happens when we come together as a group, all of us showing up having thought through the matter? What do we do? How do we listen and wait on each other when we all have made up our minds in advance?

In the reading I shared just a few minutes ago by Belleruth Naparstek she suggestes that listening to someone, particularly to people whose ways of knowing and articulating their ideas, is a practice that has to be cultivated over time. It requires a willingness to be open to people, ideas, what we don’t know. It becomes a part of us as we discipline ourselves to see the connections, the interlocking webs of energy among people and things and residing as much as possible in that place of no separation.

For me, it begins with my willingness to be taught. Sad to say, but sometimes I find myself relating to my children like the character Lena Younger did with her son. I’m finding that as I suspend my own opinions about what I think they should do, and listen to the ideas that are forming in their heads, then my spirit is freed to look at the world in a new way. I am no longer bound by pre-determined outcomes, unexplored lines of reasoning, and dogmatic thinking that may, or may not, have worked for me at a different time and place. Even if I don’t agree with their decisions, or their plans don’t turn out as they forecasted, hopefully by my willingness to hear them I will have preserved a pathway that will lead to a deeper and richer sharing.

But let me return to the question I posed earlier regarding listening in a gathered community such as this one. Just as openness is an activity that must be cultivated, so also is hospitality. When we practice genuine hospitality we are inviting guests into out homes, into our lives with graciousness. We are creating a free space where even the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. We focus on the positive, being willing to cross boundaries and dismantle the barriers taught to us by society and personal experience that have shown themselves to be scurrilous and just plan wrong. In religious communities, we come to the realization that “spirit” speaks in many languages, and the practice of hospitality helps us receive these multiple messages.

Now, practicing hospitality doesn’t mean that we give up our right to have our commitments and opinions, even to fight for them earnestly. Nor does it mean that we as a group collapse into some kind of mushy glob of unexamined pluralism. But it does, that we intentionally bend towards each other. We approach them from a centeredness that regards them as knower’s of truth as well as wisdom seekers.

In her book, “Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way”, Mary Catherine Bateson, Professor Emerita of Anthropology and English at George Mason University, advances quite persuasively that curious people are creative. And creative people are always looking for new information. Being curious about what other people are saying, and how they are dealing with information. This is a good place to start, she says, if we are to encounter one another; to glimpse that place in all of us that is filled with mystery and surprise. When we approach each other with an open and unfettered hospitality, particularly as it relates to understanding those things upon which their minds are made up, it provides us with a quality of insight that welcomes “…setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side… learning by letting them speak to one another.”²

You know as well as I do that it is often difficult to listen…to hear another person. I’m not referring to the pitch of their voice, their posture or facial expression, or even their style of delivery; although they often factor in. I’m referring to when we disagree with what they’ve said. The content. Their faulty premise. Their weak supporting arguments. Their altogether inappropriate suggestion. It happens on the job, in private organizations, even in churches. Many a group has been destroyed, or its business severely hampered, because their members have failed to hear one another. And at times when they have stopped long enough to listen, the person speak has only been met with eyes that indicate the listener is busy filtering what is being said, or rehearsing what they will say when the speaker is finished. We’re all guilty of this at one time or another. Maybe it’s just part of being a human being. Maybe it is a sign of our need to become more human.

I am grateful for the home that I was reared in. I’m proud of my educational attainments. I look back on all the experiences that I’ve had, particularly in religious settings, and can truthfully say that those were some of the richest times in my life. I know what interests me, and I know what doesn’t. Like you I can in a few minute write up a list of things that I think are worthwhile studying, and a list that I consider an utter waste of time. And I have a list to which I relegate all things unintelligent, immature, and of reptilian thinking. I know what I know and don’t look forward to having my time wasted on ideas and perspectives that I don’t believe in, and have a sneaking suspicion won’t work.

I also know that when I think like this, I am living into the smallest, most underdeveloped part of myself. And I am cutting myself off from a world of ideas, a world of knowing and being that in time, in the most unsuspecting manner, could enrich my heart and mind like nothing I could have conjured up in a million years.

In the last 5 years, I’ve been learning the art of listening. I’m no where near where I should be, but surely a ways from where I started. A new spouse, three more children, a new city, and a new denomination are presenting me with opportunities to learn the art of deep listening. If I’m learning anything, it is:

1. Wait for the entire message.

We are not all made the same way. We communicate differently, perceive information differently.

2. Acknowledge the good in what is being said.

While some truths may be more palatable, durable, and practicable than others, we’d do well to remember that wisdom has no master or keeper. A word of wisdom, a seemingly illogical suggestion could very well be part of the solution to a multifaceted issue.

3. Separate what you don’t agree with from the person doing the speaking.

I poem I heard at a workshop this past summer that celebrated the hard work and benefits of interreligious dialogue. A line in it that continues to stick with me says:

Other people are not a failed attempt at being you.

Our perspectives are our own. Just that. But how much stronger we would be if we would find our way to see not one model of being right, but various contexts that may call for several ways of being right.

John Fox, a Certified Poetry Therapist, offers these words on deep listening, whether we are listener or speaker:

“When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup

you’ve had since childhood

and watching it fill up with

cold, fresh water.

When it balances on top of the brim,

you are understood.

When it overflows and touches your skin,

you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you,

the room where you stay

starts a new life

and the place where you wrote

your first poem

begins to glow in your mind’s eye.

It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you,

your bare feet are on the earth

and a beloved land that seemed distant

is now home within you.

May all of us as listeners and speakers extend and receive acceptance and be transformed in what each of us contributes to the life of this congregation…particularly when we gather confident in our own thoughts. May it be so.

A sermon preached by Rev. Cynthia D. Heilman at

Oberlin Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Oberlin, Ohio

Sunday, 27 January 2008