Why Listen Anyway ...

At the risk of sounding like a bad, outdated online dating profile ... I'm a "good listener"

Remember when we used to value listening? I remember reading articles about traits of a “good listener,” and I’m pretty sure people used to list “good listener” at the top of their online dating profiles back when those consisted of something more than heavily filtered photos …

Over the past few years, being a “good listener” has felt more like a curse than a blessing. I’m a mom, a pastor, and a reporter - and I spent 2018 basically doing a “listening tour” across America, reporting on religion and politics for my 2019 book, Red State Christians.

Since writing that book, plus working on some edits for the new edition that came out last month, I’ve mostly been listening for the past four years. I’ve been listening to other reporters and writers, spending hours each day reading news from across America and around the world: from the war in Ukraine to climate catastrophes from Pakistan to Kentucky. I’ve been listening to writers I admire warning about the increasing authoritarian and exclusionary tilt of American Christianity, bound up in racism, sexism, and abuse of power.

I’ve been listening to God: preaching every single Sunday in a little rural church in the Upper Midwest, studying Bible passages each week. I’ve been listening to the kids who I’ve watched grow from babies I baptized years ago, to my middle school Confirmation students, to wedding couples I married this past summer, to elderly Bible Study attendees and assisted living residents.

I’ve also been listening to my urban neighbors in Minneapolis: as our hearts were ripped open with the murder of George Floyd two and a half years ago, as fellow parents try to support teachers and also keep our kids and families sane after the Minneapolis Public Schools strike of 2022 and various COVID-related educational disruptions.

After a while, sometime this summer, all the noise started to be too much. I’d been listening so hard that I could feel my brain reaching its limit. Sometimes it felt like we were living in a world where no one had the capacity to listen to each other anymore. I didn’t want to live in that world. I didn’t want to have to scream to be heard.

The truth is, while I listened, I used to write a lot, too. Every single week. But for the past year or so, after the heartbreaking death of my brother-in-law to COVID-19 at age 43, I haven’t been able to figure out what to say. I was tired of people jumping to anger or outrage without first taking a second to listen. To open their hearts to hear someone else. Maybe even hear God. And too often, so-called “Christians” were the most guilty of all. They were quick to blame everybody else. Anyone but themselves.

Which brings us here, to today. I’m guessing I’m not the only one who feels like no one has been listening over the past few years. I’m certain I’m not the only parent who has lain awake at night, after listening to our kids growing up in a world of Uvalde and Buffalo and Jan. 6, and wishing someone would listen to our need for a future where our kids can grow up safe, joyful, and free.

So this newsletter is my little message in a bottle, tossed into the abyss of the internet and the world. It’s an attempt to make listening cool again, somehow.

Each week, this is my promise to share with you what I’m hearing. Eventually, I’m hoping you (readers) will be a part of my listening, too. I want to hear what’s happening in your corner of the world, what you’re listening to, and who is hearing you.

I want to recapture the notion that it makes a difference when we listen, really listen, to each other.

If you’re reading this, you might know that I’m an ordained minister - and that might make you cringe. Sometimes, it makes me cringe, too. Religion’s brand has been rough lately: more concerned with power and money than love and charity and justice. So this newsletter, I can promise, isn’t going to be about preaching.

But at the same time, listening, for me, is not only about our connection to one another - it’s ultimately the way that we can connect to the spiritual, the divine, to God (however you understand God in your life). I think prayer is a whole lot more about listening than it is about heaping up empty phrases. (Jesus thought this, too).

So I’ll close with one final reason why I think we have to listen for life to mean anything at all.

In the Hebrew Bible, 1 Kings 19, the word of God comes to the Prophet Elijah. God tells Elijah to go on the mountain, for God is about to pass by. And then there is a great wind, splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.

God was not in the wind.

Then there was an earthquake. Shaking the ground violently under Elijah’s feet.

God was not in the earthquake.

There was a fire: burning hot and red, with black smoke billowing above Elijah’s head.

God was not in the fire.

After the fire, there was a sound of sheer silence.

Elijah wouldn’t have heard God if he hadn’t waited, listening, through the wind, the earthquake, and the fire. He found God in the quiet after the storm, in the place where he came to listen.

You know as well as I do that these past few years have been full of wind, earthquakes, and fire: both literal and figurative. Our ears have been assaulted by the shouting of angry people and hungry ad-makers, drafting algorithms to keep our brains unsatisfied and unable to listen for more than a few seconds at a time, at least the length it takes for us to take out our credit cards and place an order.

This story about Elijah gives me hope that at the end of it all, if we find a way to keep listening, we’ll find a God who comes to listen to us, and give us rest, renewal, and love.

In the mean time, I’m listening: and I look forward to sharing what I hear with you.